Pliant Raises $40 Million to Bring B2B Payments Offering to US
European B2B payments FinTech Pliant raised $40 million in new funding.
The company’s Series B round brings Pliant’s total funding to more than $100 million and sets the stage for its expansion to the United States, according to a Monday (April 28) press release.
“B2B payments remain one of the most underserved and inefficient areas in global finance — still hindered by manual processes, opaque infrastructure and slow settlement cycles,” Konstantin Koenig, principal at Illuminate Financial, which helped lead the Series B, said in the release. “Pliant’s platform brings a much-needed layer of automation, flexibility and intelligence to corporate payments, unlocking real value for modern businesses.”
Founded in 2020, Pliant’s payments platform serves clients in sectors such as travel, cards as a service and banking. The company’s goal is to bring its expertise in payment processes to a broader range of industries, per the release.
This month, Pliant acquired Austrian InsurTech hi.health to apply its payments expertise to the insurance sector, the release said.
“By embedding a payment option into the submission process, [hi.health is] revolutionizing what has traditionally been a cumbersome reimbursement workflow and creating real value in the process,” Pliant CEO Malte Rau said in an April 16 press release.
Pliant’s Series B comes nearly one year to the day after its last funding round, in which it raised $19 million with the help of PayPal Ventures.
Meanwhile, there is a transformative change in B2B sales strategy happening via payments.
The days of net-60 and net-90 terms as the default are coming to an end, fueled in part by the demand for cash flow transparency on each side of the transaction. This turns building a B2B sales approach into a team sport, with finance as a key player.
“A payment might be due in 30 days, but the buyer might typically pay in 45 or 60,” Boost Payment Solutions CEO Dean Leavitt told PYMNTS this month. “If suppliers can get paid at day 30 for agreeing to accept commercial cards or other digital solutions, they do it. That gives them a working capital advantage.”
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