LISBON AND LONDON-BASED STARTUP NOOK ANNOUNCES IT HAS SECURED €950K TO REINVENT B2B PAYMENTS
A B2B payments startup Nook, founded this year despite pandemic concerns is reportedly braced with a number of top-tier VCs and angel investors. However, it comes as the Lisbon and London-based startup – Nook announced it has secured €950k pre-seed round, geared towards its simplified mission on how businesses in the axis of trade with a collaboration platform that enables businesses to exchange data, manage payments and enforce contracts could be addressed.
The subject startup which is believed to be addressing the UK’s market had its pre-seed round led by Speedinvest and TriplePoint. This also saw the participation of Ascension, Notion, coupled with angels investor Michael Kent (founder of Azimo), Emre Baran (founder of Qubit and Cerbos), and Charlie Delingpole (founder of ComplyAdvantage and Market Invoice).
In the meantime, the company has created the first ‘trade collaboration platform’ on a mission to disrupt the B2B payment market. While offering a solution-based service aimed at addressing the existing challenges in the axis of B2B payments, in addition to errors, fraud, and operation costs. Typically, it’s understood B2B payments have traditionally relied on PDF invoices, emails, and manual data entry into bookkeeping systems, while on the other hand, previous decades witnessed the evolution of B2C payments, yet, the B2B payment industry has continued to dominate via PDF documents and email.
Meanwhile, to ensure the dominance of B2B payment is altered accordingly, the subject company has taken the bull by the horn by offering an alternative for B2B payments coupled with a platform that integrates with a business’s existing accounting software in addition to bank accounts. To this end, businesses can use the startup’s platform to extract invoice data from existing PDFs or share invoices that also include orders directly via the platform.
Prior to the company’s latest (Nook’s announcement), it’s been figured out that using the subject platform will help businesses drive faster payment, help with enforcement of payment terms and debt chasing. As such, customers of Xero, Sage, and Quickbooks are advised to take advantage of the startup’s simplified invoice workflow, while saving valuable time.
Typically, a good number of B2B payments rely heavily on PDF invoices and email which is proven to be insecure and not economical. Equally, invoice fraud which has been a huge concern is affecting businesses associated with this type of payment system, hence, it became the source of inspiration that triggered the company’s vision to develop a trade network that ultimately replaces the need for businesses to exchange PDF documents. However, with more than 50% of UK’s SMEs having adopted cloud accounting solutions, the need to provide a secure and effortless approach for those solutions to interact is proven paramount, and that’s Nook’s goal.
In view of this, ‘Olga Shikhantsova’ Principal with the Speedinvest Fintech investment team said: “Business payments haven’t kept pace with the way the world works today, making them needlessly cumbersome and time-consuming”. Adding that, “The team at Nook have created an elegant solution to the problem, and we’re looking forward to supporting them as they bring it into the world”.
“Nook’s vision for a trade network is a compelling reinvention of the day-to-day reality that businesses face when it comes to one of their most fundamental functions: generating revenue”, ‘Daniel Cardenas-Clark, Investment Director at TriplePoint said. “We’re excited to help Joe and Henry make that vision the new normal for B2B payments”.
The startup which was co-founded by ‘Joe Lines’ and ‘Henry Arnold’ plans to use the new fundraised to expand its product and engineering team while broadening the product that will help develop sales and marketing activity with SMEs and accountants.
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