Payments Startup Lands $356 Million Valuation, Tripling From Last Year
Summary
Kirsten Green, the founder and managing partner of Forerunner, will join Balances board of directors.The financing bucks a downtrend in fintech, where stocks have fallen sharply and many startups have paused capital-raising efforts or slashed valuations. Stripe recently cut its internal valuation 28%, according to a Wall Street Journal report.Today, the business-to-business payments market sees $120 trillion in annual transactions, but only a small fraction of them are executed digitally. The primary payment methods are paper checks, automated clearing house (ACH) transactions and wire transfers. The company makes money by collecting fees on the transactions it processes.Balance customers range across sizes and industries, counting restaurant-supply marketplace Choco and apparel platform Zilingo among its users. The company has also integrated with Shopify and Magento so businesses without websites can quickly set up online storefronts and begin processing transactions.In the next two years, if youre not online, youre essentially dead in terms of the dynamic in the market, says Bar Geron, 33, Balance cofounder and CEO.Geron and cofounder Yoni Shuster met while working at PayPal.