PayEm Expense and Benefit Management Platform Raises $220 Million in Equity and Debt

When Itamar Jobani, a software developer by trade, worked for a healthcare company, he dreaded creating expense reports every month using his employer’s favorite reimbursement tool. Jobani was looking for an alternative, but couldn’t find one, so he built it himself.

PayEm, as it became known, launched in 2019: Jobani teamed up with developer Omer Rimoch to get the idea off the ground. Building a completely new shopping and spending platform could have been a huge risk, but it seems to be paying off for Jobani, who says PayEm now has “hundreds” of customers and rapidly growing revenue (a 550% increase over from last year). ). ).

To pave the way for further growth, PayEm closed a $20 million Series A share round and secured a $200 million line of credit, the company announced today. Viola Credit, Mitsubishi Financial Group, Collaborative Fund, Pitango First, NFX, LocalGlobe and Glilot+ are among those contributing US$220 million in funds, which Jobani said will go towards expanding PayEm’s card business, serving customers and improving the employee experience in the industry. company will become a core digital product.

Why the decision to raise debt instead of equity? Jobani says it was a matter of time and flexibility. PayEm opted for storage credit, where your lender sets up a facility that PayEm can access and use to generate its own credit. As more customers borrow from PayEm, both PayEm and the lender benefit from the loans.

Stock lending is relatively common in the fintech space. Buy now, pay later Startup Afterpay had five storage locations at the end of 2022.

“To continue and support our customers’ expansion, we use a line of credit…to fund our customers’ short-term payments,” Jobani told TechCrunch via email. “A credit guarantee system is a perfectly structured tool to support our customers’ payment activities and provide them with monthly payment terms so that they can keep their business running as our business continues to grow. The size of this loan pool reflects the growing number of monthly transactions on the PayEm platform.

PayEm provides procurement tools and workflows for expense approval automation, accounts payable automation, purchase order creation, expense reimbursement, and credit card management. The recording-to-reporting platform captures employee spending requests, engages relevant stakeholders for approval based on collected data, and provides budgeting capabilities for budget monitors.

“[With PayEm,] CEOs and CFOs gain full control and real-time visibility into spend at the subsidiary, department and even employee level to ensure 360-degree efficiency,” said Jobani. employees gain real-time visibility and control over all aspects of budget spend. PayEm makes it easy to request funds, issue refunds and issue employee-specific business cards, keeping costs and budget under control.”

Of course, PayEm isn’t the only provider to offer this, and it’s not surprising when you consider how lucrative the space is. According to Verified Market Research, the total expense management software market was estimated at $1.08 billion in 2019 and could reach $3.97 billion by 2027. Tipalti, which automates accounts payable for small and medium-sized businesses, recently raised $270 million. There’s also Bill.com, Brex (which recently raised $300 million), Ramp ($200 million in its latest funding round), and Zip (last valued at $1.2 billion).

But Jobani points to PayEm’s continued expansion as proof that it’s successfully outpacing the competition. The platform now bills and sends payments in more than 200 territories and 130 currencies, and its customer base has grown nearly 300% in the past year.

PayEm’s workforce, spread across offices in San Francisco, New York and Tel Aviv, is also growing and now numbers about 100 full-time employees. Recent additions to the C-Suite include Chief Revenue Officer Steve Sovik, formerly CRO of Tipalti, and Vice President of Products Gilad Bonjack, formerly of Hibob and Lightsticks.

“In today’s macroeconomic environment, it has never been more important for companies to have an efficient and clear view of their financial health. We are excited to be that single source of truth for them as they are able to navigate turbulent times, manage supply chain issues and simply need to do more with less,” added Jobani. as-a-service industry is impacted by general sentiment, we see the value of our product increase in times like these, which helps to visualize spend, reduce costs and improve the overall acquisition and sales journey to make payment improve. process simple and transparent.”