The company on Thursday (July 9) announced it had raised $8 million in a Series A extension and launched a $275 million debt facility to scale its capacity. Aria says the new financing comes amid a “late payments crisis” in Europe.
“No business owner should spend an average of 86 hours a year chasing late payments,” Clément Carrier, co-founder and CEO of Aria, said in a news release provided to PYMNTS.
“That’s more than two working weeks spent on the phone and writing emails instead of building their business. We want suppliers to get paid straight away and move on to the next order.”
The equity round was headed by 115K, the venture capital arm of La Banque Postale, with participation from returning investor 13books Capital, and will help Aria invest in AI tooling, expand its staff and bring new clients on board.
The debt facility is structured across a securitization fund in which Aria purchases invoices from suppliers and transfers the receivables to the fund, “which issues securities to investors backed by buyers’ future payments. As buyers settle their invoices, the cash recycles to finance new purchases.”
In a “separate legal vehicle,” Sienna and Montpensier Arbevel have committed added capital, the release said.
Aria says it bridges the gap “between suppliers who need to be paid quickly and buyers who prefer longer terms,” with its platform embedding invoice financing in ERP systems, marketplaces and other places where B2B transactions take place.
According to the release, the EU Payment Observatory has estimated that dealing with the late payments issue could unlock more 100 billion euros in additional cash flow per year, “a lifeline given that 65% of affected companies already struggle to access external finance.”
The funding comes as delayed payments have gone from being “mere operational headaches” to representing “measurable revenue loss, higher operating costs and weaker customer relationships,” as PYMNTS wrote earlier this week.
A PYMNTS Intelligence and Plaid collaboration, “When Controls Slow Commerce: The Data Behind Middle-Market Payment Friction,” showed that payments controls designed to reduce fraud can also slow legitimate transactions when they rely on manual intervention or fragmented infrastructure.
“The findings suggest that the challenge extends beyond payments operations,” PYMNTS added. “The report revealed that 55% of chief financial officers said fraud or security controls caused customer- or partner-facing payments delays at least occasionally during the past year, while only 43% rated their organization’s ability to process payments quickly while maintaining security controls as strong or very strong.”
