Berlin’s B2B Payments Startup topi Raises $4.5M Pre-Seed Funding

Berlin-headquartered business-to-business (B2B) payments startup topi raised a $4.5 million in a pre-seed funding round co-led by Index Ventures and Creandum, according to a press release on Tuesday (Dec. 14).

Founded by Estelle Merle and Charlotte Pallua, the startup has its eye on becoming an international enabler of frictionless payments for B2B companies.

Other investors in the pre-seed round included angel investors Hello Fresh founder Dominik Richter, N26 founder Max Tayenthal, Team Adyen founder Thijn Lamers, and WeFox founder Fabian Wesemann.

See also: The New Normal: B2B Payments Must Be Like B2C Transactions

“topi has the potential to become the connective tissue that facilitates B2B payments worldwide,” said Jan Hammer, general partner at Index Ventures. “B2B payments is the unsexy cousin of consumer payments — yet the opportunity is much bigger.

“The size of the market, the caliber of the topi team and the creative, unique solution they’ve come up with make this a hugely exciting investment for us.”

The B2B payments market is $120 trillion, and it’s estimated that by 2028, it will be five times that of the consumer payments market.

Despite the potential, the B2B trade is largely manual and fragmented, according to the release. Meanwhile, the consumer market has a wide variety of payment choices.

Read more: New Research: 56% of SMBs See Revenue Boost From Immediate Payment Platforms

“Companies make purchasing decisions almost on a daily basis,” Pallua said in the release. “Yet there are no fully digital end-to-end processes in B2B sales, and no customer-friendly financing offers.

“The result for many companies, especially SMEs, are suboptimal purchasing decisions, inefficient use of capital or lengthy bureaucratic processes. Our company aims to provide business customers with the opportunity to use our technology and financing solutions to change just that.”

topi’s co-founders met while earning their MBAs at Harvard Business School in Boston. Pallua then went on to work for Apple in California, while Merle spent four years at Goldman Sachs in London.

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“We see a clear shift towards the consumerization of the enterprise and a great opportunity in providing digital solutions to SMEs,” Merle said. “We want to bring our financing solutions to the B2B sales processes, to offer new payment options and thereby contribute our part to allow B2B trade to shift online and allow companies to drive customer retention.”