Finance
Payflows Raises $26 Million for All-In-One Finance Platform
French FinTech Payflows has raised $26 million for its all-in-one platform for finance teams.
The company announced the funding on LinkedIn as it emerged from stealth Monday (April 22), saying that its platform would “set finance teams free from boring manual work.”
In less than 18 months, Payflows said, “we built a suite of procurement, payments, cash management and cash collection modules which are best-of-breed in their category and combined into an all-in-one platform.”
“We are forever grateful to our first customers — amongst some of the best forward-looking European finance and procurement teams — for their belief in our big vision and our mighty team. Our number one motivation is to make their lives easier.”
And that’s something most organizations are looking for in 2024, as PYMNTS wrote last week.
“More and more organizations are recognizing the need to update and modernize what has historically been a manual, paper-based process — but one that’s also very mission critical to the business function,” Kat Battle, product manager for Complete AP at Bank of America, told PYMNTS in an interview last November.
Battle spoke of a client she had recently worked with who was “hand signing 7,000 checks per month and mailing them out.”
That situation had opened that company up to fraud, she said. Aside from the cost savings associated with accounts payable (AP) modernization, automating away legacy bottlenecks also helps make business payments more secure.
“AP automation solutions can automate 75% of the manual steps required for paper-based methods, leaving only the control pieces of the process behind like approving invoices, approving payments,” she said.
By making the streamlining of accounts receivable (AR) processes a priority, CFOs hope to unlock liquidity trapped in inefficient systems, thus putting their businesses on a more stable financial footing, PYMNTS wrote.
“And, ultimately, by addressing their top worries, CFOs can better position their companies to navigate the uncertainties of the global economy, ensuring not only survival but also the potential for growth and sustainable success,” that report said.
“Chief value officer, or CVO, might be a more suitable title in the future for this position where you’re looking at not just financial analysis, reporting and controls, but value creation and how to use those resources to drive value creation for the company,” LiquidX CFO Abhishek Khandelwal told PYMNTS.
“It’s critically important to strike a balance in being a financial steward of the company and at the same time supporting the innovation that can drive future growth.”
By Nupur Anand
NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. consumers are starting to curb their spending in response to high prices and a worsening economic outlook, according to consumer finance company Synchrony Financial (SYF).
Americans have been accumulating more debt amid strain in their finances, with delinquencies edging up for auto loans, credit cards and home credit lines, the Federal Reserve said last month.
Philadelphia Federal Reserve President Patrick Harker has also warned that trouble may be brewing for the U.S. economy, which is showing signs of stress in the consumer sector with consumer confidence also waning.
The belt-tightening indicates that Americans, whose finances are broadly healthy, are preparing for their finances to be more stretched, said Max Axler, chief credit officer of Synchrony. Most clients are still keeping up their loan repayments, he added.
“Purchase volumes have gone down across the industry as consumers across all income groups become more thoughtful about spending,” Axler told Reuters.
Synchrony, which issues credit cards in partnership with retailers and merchants, has more than 100 million consumer credit accounts.
U.S. consumer sentiment plunged to a nearly 2-1/2-year low in March as inflation expectations soared. Some economists have warned that President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs could boost prices and undercut growth.
Concerns about higher prices have driven consumers’ long-term inflation expectations to levels last seen in early 1993.
Retailers including Target and Walmart have said that shoppers are being careful with their spending, waiting for deals or making tradeoffs to lower-priced items.
Household spending cuts could be a precursor to increasing late credit payments or loan defaults, analysts said. While default rates have remained broadly steady, spending is being watched carefully as an early indicator of deteriorating consumer finances.
Borrowers could also become more cautious, taking out fewer or smaller loans and crimping a key source of revenue for banks. Across the industry, loan growth slowed by 5% to 12% in February versus a year earlier, HSBC analyst Saul Martinez said.
“There is clearly a slowdown, and it shows that the consumer is vulnerable,” Martinez said. “And for banks, slowing loan growth could result in lower net interest income and revenue,” he added.
The concerns about household finances have also weighed on consumer finance stocks with shares of American Express (AXP), Capital One (COF), Synchrony, (SYF) and Discover (DFS) down between 15-22% over the past month, Martinez said.
While most of the CDFI fund appears to be protected by Congress, Hinkle Brown said he’s concerned that the rules won’t apply.
“It’s unclear what overzealous implementation in this regard would look like,” he said. “If they eviscerate and make non-functional the CDFI fund there’s a lot of costs, the Philly region will suffer.”
It could put a dent in regional economic development efforts in low income communities, said Leslie Benoliel, CEO of Entrepreneur Works in Philadelphia.
“[Community Development Financial Institutions] are like the capillaries of the financial distribution system in our country. And if you cut off the blood flow to those extremities, that will cause enormous harm,” Benoliel said.
Small business owners who may not typically trust the banking system or government often will work one-on-one with a community organization, she said.
CDFIs across Pennsylvania were allocated $32 million under financial assistance, healthy foods and persistent poverty county financial assistance awards last year.
If there’s no federal support, local nonprofits will likely have to raise money another way, said Varsovia Fernandez, CEO of the Pennsylvania CDFI Network.
“There is a possibility of moving to a fee for services model where small businesses need to pay to receive technical assistance education and I would imagine [loans would have] a higher rate to be sustainable,” she said. “I am hoping that it’s not a drastic change what the White House ends up doing.”
On March 17, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement that the Trump administration understands the significance of the federal fund and local community lending organizations.
“CDFIs [Community Development Financial Institutions] are a key component of President Trump’s commitment to supporting Main Street America in the pursuit of job growth, wealth creation and prosperity,” Bessent said.
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