Expense management start-up Payhawk lands $3.3m seed capital

Written by Ruby Hinchliffe
18th March 2020

Payhawk, a paperless expenses service and corporate card provider, has closed €3 million ($3.3 million) in seed funding.

The start-up launched 18 months ago, and now has offices across the UK, Bulgaria and Germany, serving more than 1,000 users in 14 countries.

“Many employees are forced to spend personal funds,” says CEO

Led by N26-backer Earlybird, a Berlin-based venture capital firm, Payhawk’s round also saw participation from TinyVC and Eleven Ventures as well as individuals such as ex-chief commercial officer at Visa Europe Mark Antipof, and chief strategy officer at Sage Keith Robinson.

The Sofia-founded firm, led by CEO Hristo Borisov, acknowledges the current coronavirus climate in which it has secured funding, citing words from Bill Gurley said during the 2008 financial crisis.

“Environments like this tend to sort out the true entrepreneurs and teams from the pretenders. [.] Only the best entrepreneurs set sail in rough seas like this,” Gurley said.

Borisov, who has founded various other Sofia-based tech companies, says his latest venture to solve expense management is down to the current “bureaucratic”, “non-transparent” and “paperwork”-heavy system.

“Many employees are forced to spend personal funds, manually track expenses with the legacy expense apps, write cumbersome reports and wait months to get reimbursed,” says Borisov.

“Our payment solution addresses exactly this pain point and supports businesses in their transition to a new, paperless and digital age without being forced to switch banks.”

Payhawk’s platform is designed to manage the entire spending lifecycle, from requesting money, to loading a corporate card with funds, to paying and collecting the invoices, to reconciling transactions, and to generating real-time reports.

“Neobanks paved the way for great customer experience in payments”, says Roland Manger Earlybird’s co-founder and partner.

“Payhawk decided to combine the best of what exists today and integrate it into a next-generation platform with a great customer experience without forcing businesses to switch banks.”