On EQT Ventures’ Investment in Billhop — Simplifying B2B Payments
The news is out! B2B payments platform Billhop has raised €10.5 million led by EQT Ventures with participation from existing investors including Element Ventures (final close subject to approval by the Swedish Financial Inspection Authority).
Ashley Lundtsröm, Partner EQT Ventures
Erik Malm CTO & co-founder of Billhop
Photo: Christopher Hunt
The boom in fintech over the last decade has largely been about connectivity, with innovations in the payments layer driving the massive shift from cash, checks, and invoices, to cards, direct debits, digital P2P, mobile, etc, (and now we’re only talking fiat..). This has translated into payments companies being some of the fastest growing companies in fintech, with the transformation digital payments still far from over.
Consumers have had front row seats to the transformation, with trillions of dollars transacted digitally — over €6 trillion in e-commerce alone — and in the EU card payments making up over half of payments in nearly every country. B2B payments on the other hand, where transaction values are substantially higher, has seen slower developments — for example card payments making up less than 10% of B2B transactions. However, as we’ve witnessed across other categories, the speed and convenience of consumer experiences creates expectations and opportunities, we believe innovations are welcomed in B2B payments as well — a market worth $120 trillion worldwide.
EQT is an active investor in payments, with investments in emerging category winners such as Griffin, Banking Circle, Juni, Willa, Volt and Mollie. We are proud to add a new team to that list; out of one of fintech’s home markets, Stockholm. Enter Billhop.
Billhop enables its business customers to pay with cards, leveraging existing card infrastructure via fixed fees, not interest, and without requiring vendors to make changes to accounts receivables processes. Cumbersome invoice processing — which for some companies occupies entire finance teams for categories like tail spend, can see major efficiency gains. SMEs and corporates alike also take advantage of opportunities to improve liquidity and working capital management via e.g. extended payment terms.
Billhop has been quietly laying bricks, establishing partnerships with the all the major card schemes, acquirers, and global commercial issuers. The model, providing benefits to all parties across the value chain, is a series of win-wins the market evidently appreciates — when we spoke to these partners we frankly couldn’t believe how enthusiastic everyone was. Accordingly, Billhop is now processing over €250 million in transaction volume for customers across 20 countries.
And the team? Led by co-founders Sebastian Andreescus, Erik Malm, and Ingemar Sjögren, they are very nice, very hungry, and of course hiring!
