Image credits: Topi
Topi, a Berlin-based B2B payments startup, announced that it has raised $4.5M (approx €4M) funding in a pre-seed round co-led by Index Ventures and Creandum.
A consortium of angel investors, including Dominik Richter (founder of HelloFresh), Max Tayenthal (founder of mobile bank N26), Thijn Lamers (founding Team Adyen), and Fabian Wesemann (founder and CFO WeFox), also participated.
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“Companies make purchasing decisions almost on a daily basis. 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,” says Charlotte Pallua, co-founder of Topi.
“Our company aims to provide business customers with the opportunity to use our technology and financing solutions to change just that,” she adds.
Fast and frictionless payments
Founded by Estelle Merle and Charlotte Pallua in 2021, Topi aims to become a global enabler of fast and frictionless payments for business-to-business trade.
The B2B payment market is $120T (approx €106T) and will be five times the size of the consumer payments market by 2028, says the company.
“We see a clear shift towards the consumerisation of the enterprise and a great opportunity in providing digital solutions to SMEs. 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.” Estelle Merle, co-founder of topi, commented.
“We are very excited to embark on this new journey together with our team and want to build a fair and transparent fintech, where integrity, diversity, and a customer-first attitude are the core of our values,” she adds.
Investors
Index Ventures is a venture capital firm that helps entrepreneurs turn bold ideas into global businesses.
“Topi has the potential to become the connective tissue that facilitates B2B payments worldwide,” says Jan Hammer, the General Partner at Index who led the investment and has backed companies like Robinhood, Adyen, and Wise.
“B2B payments is the unsexy cousin of consumer payments – yet the opportunity is much bigger. The size of the market, the calibre of the Topi team and the creative, unique solution they’ve come up with make this a hugely exciting investment for us,” he adds.
Creandum is an early-stage venture capital firm focusing on technology companies within the consumer, software, and hardware industries.
“To date, B2B payments is a largely underserved space, lacking innovation and a customer-centric product vision. Topi is enabling any business to optimise expenditures. We see Topi’s solution to be relevant for almost any business out there. Their approach is completely unique and hugely promising.” says Simon Schmincke, General Partner at Creandum.
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