Payment processing company Candex has raised a new $20 million Series A funding round. The round was led by Altos Ventures with participation from other notable investors like NFX, American Express Ventures and JP Morgan.
Founded in 2011, Candex acts as the “master vendor” for small suppliers allowing large companies to pay Candex directly and then Candex remits payments to the suppliers. The company’s technology setup takes about 14 days and allows a buyer to deal only with Candex as the “master vendor” to make payments to vendors locally and globally.
Jeremy Lappin, CEO and co-founder of Candex, told FinLedger that the company is like “Venmo for business.”
The company will use the new funding to improve its products and to expand to other countries, Lappin said. Candex currently serves 21 countries but wants to bring that number up to 33 countries. Lappin said he wants to expand in other places like Brazil, Japan, China, Turkey, Russia and Egypt.
“As a provider of solutions to large enterprises, we are constantly seeking ways to reduce friction and streamline business operations,” Lindsay Fitzgerald, Managing Director at Amex Ventures, said in a statement. “We believe Candex’s technology creates a better experience for both enterprise buyers and their suppliers. We’re looking forward to supporting Candex as they accelerate a new approach to business-to-business payments.”
We’re one of the few providers that’s able to handle the complexities of these large multinational organizations with 1,000 entities across the world.
Lappin said the company saw its revenue grow on average about 35% per month, month-over-month in 2020 and aims to continue growing this year. Candex has about 30 employees but Lappin expects by the year’s end it will have about 45 or 50 employees, and he’s hiring across departments.
Looking ahead, there’s a lot of opportunity for growth for Candex’s main customer base, which is large enterprise companies, Lappin said.
“The big guys are so complicated that they’re often overlooked,” he said. “We’re one of the few providers that’s able to handle the complexities of these large multinational organizations with 1,000 entities across the world.”
In other recent payments news, Stripe has launched Stripe Issuing in 20 countries across Europe, so now European businesses can design, ship and manage cards. More specifically, the service is now in Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and the UK, the company announced in a news release.