SME FinTech Players Earn Their Bragging Rights

During earnings season, corporations scramble to make their business look good for investors. And those efforts don’t only come out in the form of an earnings report. This week, B2B FinTech firms have been quite vocal about their recent milestones in hopes of pleasing investors and shareholders.

While businesses are wont to show their good side, the latest milestones and accomplishments on display by these firms may signal some bigger trends. Data on higher volumes of alternative SME lending, growing subscriptions to cloud-based accounting tools and rising migration to digital procurement tools offer insight into the progress of small firms’ FinTech embrace. Take a look at where service providers in these industries are placing their bragging rights.

$129 million has been lent to U.K. SMEs through TradeRiver Finance, a milestone for the company, it said last week. So far, the online lending platform has generated 1,600 individual transactions for 76 businesses in the country since the company launched operations in 2011. The company said it has also provided financing for the suppliers of more than 185 firms across 26 nations. With this growth in mind, TradeRiver said it will now look to double its size in the U.K. and focus on its U.S. operations.

1.5 million subscribers are linked into QuickBooks Online, said Intuit in an announcement. The milestone reflects the company’s commitment to small businesses and entrepreneurs, according to Executive Vice President of Intuit’s Small Business Group Sasan Goodarzi. After more than two decades in operation, QuickBooks is looking to gain a market advantage with small businesses flocking to the cloud. The company pointed to analysis that predicts that 78 percent of small businesses across the globe will be integrated into the cloud by 2020. Intuit also said that more than 80 percent of its customers on QuickBooks Online are new subscribers, and more than 26,000 developers are creating QuickBooks apps. Intuit is expected to reveal its most recent earnings report later this month.

1,300 suppliers joined the SAP Ariba Network every day in Q2, the company revealed last week. Today, SAP Ariba claims more than 2 million businesses are linked into its platform, which connects corporate buyers and sellers for the procure-to-pay process. The growth in the network has led to the generation of $2.5 billion in B2B commerce daily across 190 nations. The data was released after SAP’s Q2 earnings report, which revealed a better-than-expected performance, despite the threat of Brexit.

72% of small businesses found Funding Circle’s process faster than competitors, said the Centre for Economics and Business Research, which also found that the small business loans facilitated via Funding Circle have given a $3.49 billion boost to the U.K. economy since 2010. Researchers published the data last Thursday (Aug. 11), which also revealed that 61 percent of small business borrowers that obtained a loan through Funding Circle said their revenues increased as a result of that financing and 47 percent reported an increase in profits. In a statement, Funding Circle Cofounder and U.K. Managing Director James Meekings said the findings were “hugely rewarding.”

$57 million in revenues recorded at SME accounting firm Reckon when it published its half-year earnings report last week. The Australian-based software firm posted a 6 percent revenue jump for H1 2016. Reckon Chief Executive Clive Rabie pointed to the company’s launch of Reckon One, a cloud accounting solution for SMEs, as one driver behind the growth and added that the company is starting to see an uptick in subscribers to the service. Meanwhile, the firm’s revenues for its document management arm increased by 45 percent in the half, and Rabie added that its Payroll solution, also recently launched, is similarly leading to growth (though a press release by the company did not reveal specific figures on that unit).