Today in B2B Payments: Klavi Raises $15M to Develop New B2B Finance Products; Klasha Aims to Scale Its Products for Cross-Border African Commerce

Today in B2B payments, Klavi has raised $15 million in a Series A investment to grow its open finance solution and develop new B2B finance products, and Klasha has added a former PayPal executive as CPO to help in its mission to transform African commerce.

Klavi Raises $15M to Grow Open Finance Solution, Develop New B2B Products

Open finance SaaS platform Klavi has raised $15 million in a Series A investment round to develop new B2B finance products. Founded in 2020, the company offers technology that generates insights from open finance data and offers products to businesses of any size. Klavi CEO Bruno Chan said in a press release, “With the maturation of open finance, we’re seeing a huge gap between the data received by companies, and their use thereof.”

Klasha Adds Former PayPal Executive to Help Transform African Commerce

Klasha has appointed former PayPal executive Ayman Jawhar CPO, saying his experience will help the company scale its B2B and B2C products for cross-border African commerce. Klasha Founder and CEO Jess Anuna said in a press release, “His expertise will improve our B2B and B2C products, giving merchants more ways to sell in Africa seamlessly, and enhance the international shopping experience for customers.”

In the Beginning: How a CFO Approaches Automating a Purely Manual AP Environment

Many companies have embarked upon the journey to digitize B2B payments since the pandemic, but Reachdesk is an example of one that has only just begun. The firm, which enables B2B companies to deliver the “moments that matter” at scale through data-driven direct mail and gifting, has brought in Vic Russo as new CFO to take on that challenge. Russo told PYMNTS that, currently, sources are paid manually, but that’s about to change.

The Data Point: 90% of SMBs Using Unified Payments Save Time

B2B payments are notoriously slow and costly — witness the continued use of paper checks sent via snail mail — which is driving more operations to seek the efficiency platforms provide. For “The AP/AR Quick-Start Guide: How All-In-One Payment Platforms Can Transform B2B Transactions,” a PYMNTS and Plastiq collaboration, we surveyed 500 SMBs, finding that the problem is universal, but fixable.

New ‘Shop Talk’ Among Auto Mechanics: Embedded Payments and Instant Financing

For an industry that recognizes the need for speed, the auto repair industry has been a bit slow off the line in the race to digitization. As in other verticals, FinTech platforms are busy providing small and midsized businesses (SMBs) the tools they need for digital speed. PYMNTS caught up with DigniFi CFO Mariana Coontz and talked about many topics, including DigniFi’s mission to serve underserved credit markets to finance auto repairs at dealers and independent repair shops.

B2B Digitization Born out of Pandemic Necessity Still Yielding Unexpected Benefits

According to the latest “Business Payments Digitization: The Fast Track to Payments Systems Upgrades,” a PYMNTS and Corcentric collaboration, chief financial officers (CFOs) who have accelerated the payments modernization efforts that ramped up during the pandemic have found at least three unexpected benefits as a result.

QuickBooks Upgrade Gives SMBs Access to eCommerce Marketplace

QuickBooks’ new offering called Trada is the latest offering from an independent software vendor aimed at bringing a metaphor popularized by consumer giants like Amazon into the B2B world. It uses a marketplace model — where buyers and sellers meet online to do business. Intuit/QuickBooks can power the payment and credit and integrate directly into the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, giving users visiblity into bank balances and flows and the health of businesses.

Funding Circle, Farm Bureau Bank Partner to Offer Credit to Underserved SMBs

Online small and medium-sized business (SMB) lending platform Funding Circle and Farm Bureau Bank have announced a partnership that they say will help underserved owners of SMBs in agriculture and other industries gain access to credit. The organizations also said the partnership would enable Farm Bureau Bank, which has traditionally focused on rural communities, to serve SMBs in all industries, according to a press release.

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