Sage Teams With Funding Circle To Streamline Funds For SMEs

Sage, a British software company, has teamed with Funding Circle and MarketInvoice to help provide funding access to more SMEs.

In a news release about the deal, Sage said it formed two “flagship partnerships” to help small and medium size businesses to into the U.K.’s alternative funding options. This includes, of course, Funding Circle — an online marketplace for business loans — and MarketInvoice, which will help its small businesses’ accounting services by providing short-term funds needed to fill the gaps with outstanding invoices, licenses, contracts and subscriptions.

By working with Funding Circle, Sage said it will enable businesses to better understand how to gain access to more capital, and how to gain access to it quicker.

“Sage has been at the forefront of payment and funding innovation for years, and alternative finance is no exception,” Sage Executive Lee Perkins said in a press release. “Sage Pay already provides a key piece of the business growth puzzle, and when it comes to small business accounting, Sage 50 Accounts offers the deepest and broadest hybrid accounting capabilities on the market. By partnering with MarketInvoice and Funding Circle, we’re giving Small & Medium Businesses in the U.K. the ability to swiftly and easily apply for additional funding to support their business development and growth.”

And that’s where Sage’s partnership with Funding Circle can help build more awareness and trust into the SMB lending industry — at least according to its co-founder, James Meekings.

“The Funding Circle marketplace is currently the fifth largest net lender to small businesses in the U.K., in just under five years. But there’s still a long way to go — many small business owners remain unaware of the choice they now have when looking for finance,” he said.

As for MarketInvoice, its CEO said that support from Sage will help accelerate its growth into a market that has already experienced immense growth.

“Peer-to-peer finance is changing the face of financial services and it’s clear some of the U.K.’s biggest companies are alive to this,” said Anil Stocker, co-founder and CEO of MarketInvoice. “… We already support many of the U.K.’s most exciting, high-growth small businesses, and this partnership will make even more of these companies aware of how we can support them.”

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