The London-based firm Apron announced that it had secured a $15 million Series A fundraising round, led by Index Ventures, with Bessemer Venture Partners and Visionaries Club participation. When it comes to processing bills, the business seeks to assist small businesses.
Apron primarily targets small businesses without a finance staff and without any dedicated solution for managing and paying bills. They primarily rely on their online banking platform and email chains.
The standard software-as-a-service setup is used at first: Apron serves as the central archive for all of your invoices. After that, procedures and protocols can be established to ensure that the CEO approves significant invoices before they are paid. The firm makes use of open banking, which allows you to approve payments in Apron and send them straight from your bank account in the United Kingdom.
Due to the frequent reliance of British businesses on foreign suppliers, Apron accepts payments in 30 different currencies at competitive exchange rates with a 0.5% conversion fee. Additionally, it can be utilized to pay staff all at once.
Xero and Quickbooks are both integrated with Apron. The software enables you to determine whether you have already paid something or not by helping you reconcile payments with invoices.
Bogdan Uzbekov, the founder of Apron, said in a statement that the company “puts itself in the position of all these users – accountants, business owners, and suppliers – and instead of trying to solve business payments from just one perspective, we create a town square where they can all come together to move money as smoothly as possible.” We want to shift people’s perceptions of payments from being a burden to an enabler—something that can be done swiftly, securely, and even make you feel content and pleased.
Bogdan Uzbekov formerly worked for the UK-based consumer fintech behemoth Revolut. Since his new offering went live six months ago, millions of pounds have been processed each month through Apron.
Apron is pretty inexpensive for a solution designed specifically for small enterprises. The pay-as-you-go option has a free subscription and a cost of £1.20 for each supplier payment at the outset. Larger businesses can subscribe for a monthly fee to reduce supplier payments to £0.50 per payment.
To sum it up, Apron has successfully raised $15 million in funding, advancing its goal of streamlining invoice processing. This substantial investment is poised to empower Apron to improve its services and broaden its influence, potentially delivering increased effectiveness and convenience to enterprises and institutions engaged in managing invoices. As Apron continues its growth and refines its solutions, it will be intriguing to observe how the company contributes to the simplification of financial processes across diverse industries.
[Source of Information: Techcrunch.com]
