Nav, a prominent player in the small business financial health platform, has officially announced its acquisition of Tillful.
Tillful is a start-up geared towards the modernisation of business credit and cash flow insights.
Nav’s acquisition of Tillful is aimed at furthering the company’s data platform development, expediting its product roadmap, and harnessing small business FinTech talent across numerous functions. This acquisition is expected to contribute greatly to Nav’s efforts to address the specific needs of small and medium businesses (SMBs) while maintaining scalable unit economics.
Nav, a widely recognised FinTech app, provides a unique blend of cash flow tools and credit insights, helping SMBs gain insight into what lenders see, enabling them to make informed financial decisions. Tillful, on the other hand, is a San Francisco-based venture-funded start-up, established in 2020. Its primary focus lies in the modernisation of business credit and cash flow insights for SMBs through improved data usage.
The acquisition is a strategic response to the historical challenges SMBs face when trying to access funds, with 33% of businesses struggling or failing due to capital shortage. Given increasing economic uncertainty and the rising cost of goods and services, businesses are in greater need of financing than ever before.
Nav’s purchase of Tillful’s cashflow scoring engine aims to enhance its ability to integrate and categorise cash flow data, thereby generating proprietary financial health scores for SMBs. It is hoped that this will streamline access to capital by better aggregating financing options and using cash flow data, a growing factor in lender underwriting.
Along with the asset acquisition, several Tillful employees, including founder and former CEO, Ken So, will be joining Nav. So will assume the role of VP of Corporate Development. This acquisition is the second of its kind for Nav this year, having previously purchased assets from Canadian FinTech firm, Nuula, in January.
In the words of Nav CEO Greg Ott, “Nav delivers an unparalleled financial health experience for small businesses when they need it the most. At a time when financing options are tightening, Nav has built the only destination for businesses to find relevant and objective solutions for their specific needs. With Tillful we saw the opportunity to bring on a strong data platform and categorisation engine and a talented team who, like Nav, has empowered SMB’s to make better financial decisions based on financial data.”
Ken So also added, “We have always respected Nav’s leadership in the small business financial health space. We’re excited that our shared mission will uniquely make the credit ecosystem much more accessible to the Main Street small businesses who have been traditionally overlooked.”
Nav will continue to support both Tillful subscription customers and card holders within the Nav platform in addition to offering expanded financial health services. It boasts over 1.7MM small business customers, providing small business financing products like loans and credit cards, and now also aligns customer qualifications with accounting, tax, payroll, and other business services.
Keep up with all the latest FinTech news here.
Copyright © 2023 FinTech Global
