Paystand has acquired expense management software startup Teampay to create what the companies describe as a “fee-free B2B digital payments and expenses powerhouse.”
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Teampay has raised $65 million since its inception in 2016.
The combined company serves more than 1 million businesses running on commercial blockchain with more than 1 million participants. To date, it has processed more than $10 billion in transactions, which it says represents nearly 2% of annual business-to-business payments in the United States.
“Teampay represents this new class of fintech company,” Paystand CEO Jeremy Almond exclusively told TechCrunch. “They offer products that allow CFOs to really change the way they can digitize their entire workflow. This is what I would call a next-generation experience for users and is a great fit for our customers who are going through this very large modernization process.
Paystand will continue to manage the Teampay brand, mainly because it is well known, he said.
Almond believes fintech companies should learn lessons from consumer credit apps. In the B2B world, the process of sending and receiving funds is complex, slow, and riddled with fees. But consumers can send and receive money to each other via Venmo or CashApp. These are the kinds of features he wishes Paystand offered.
Teampay is the blockchain-enabled B2B payments provider’s second acquisition in two years. It purchased payment platform Yaydoo in 2022. At the time, Paystand’s valuation was over $1 billion. Paystand has generated $98 million in venture capital since its inception in 2014. Teampay is not on the blockchain, however, Paystand can now bring this functionality to accounts receivable and accounts payable.
“We think this is a trend in the consumerization of the business,” Almonds said. “We can now offer both sides to 1 million businesses.”
Although fintech has been a booming sector in recent years, the banking industry as a whole faces a problem with aging payment rails. This leads to higher fees, more middlemen and delays. Almond has been a long-time proponent of using decentralized financial infrastructure to solve the payment rails problem. Paystand uses the Ethereum blockchain as the engine for its Paystand banking network, which enables fee-free business-to-business payments.
“Blockchain is the new cloud,” he said. “I know blockchain, bitcoin, and decentralized financial networks have their share of problems, but they represent a fundamental shift from the same core banking system that has been in place since the 1930s.”
“A lot of people think that blockchain or decentralized finance is not ready yet,” he added. “What we’re really proving is that if you create real value for businesses and finance teams, people will use it. »
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