Fintech company Pleo, an all-in-one business spending platform based around smart company cards, today announces a $56M Series B financing round led by Stripes, a leading New York-based growth fund, with participation from existing investors, Kinnevik, Creandum and Founders.
The round brings the total amount raised by the company to $79M.
Founded in 2015 with the aim of transforming the laborious business expense process, Pleo has achieved dynamic growth. Last year’s $16M Series A funding round was Denmark’s largest in a decade and today’s fundraise is Denmark’s largest Series B. More than 3500 companies of all sizes and verticals, have switched to Pleo across the UK, Denmark, Germany and Sweden. Its customers include Airsorted, The Tab, Lyst, Yoyo, Pizza Pilgrims and Roskilde Festival amongst others, with hundreds of new businesses joining Pleo every month.
Pleo provides smart company cards paired with software and mobile apps to automatically match receipts and track all company spending in real-time with detailed analytics. Pleo eliminates expense reports and automates bookkeeping tasks as it integrates directly with accounting software providers, saving companies time and money.
“Managing work-related spending has traditionally caused headaches for employees and their employers alike. Pleo is making the whole process simpler, quicker and more transparent,” comments Jeppe Rindom, co-founder and CEO at Pleo. “We are building a solution to fit the needs of today’s modern workforce - reshaping how businesses manage company spending, and how they operate, enabling staff to feel more empowered and ultimately more productive. By making the employee experience our primary focus from day one, we’ve achieved outstanding growth, rave reviews and extremely strong customer satisfaction and loyalty.”
Research shows less than one in five employees (16%)*1 are given access to a corporate credit card with employees left to fork out for business expenses out of their own pocket. Pleo is changing this - its approach to business spending has on average quadrupled the number of cards within a company making it one of the biggest corporate card providers in the Nordics.
Pleo will use the funding round to expand more than triple its headcount, from 120 to 400 employees by the end of 2020 and to accelerate product development as it aims to service the entire purchase process for SMEs across the whole of Europe. This includes adding credit, invoices, mobile payments, a vendor marketplace, VAT reclaim and more.
“While we are competing with banks in this one area we are not aiming to become one. We remain committed to providing the best product in the market for business spending. We haven’t touched the funds from our Series A round less than a year ago, yet we see enormous potential and demand for Pleo. We are delighted to partner with Stripes and are confident the partnership will help us achieve our ambition to become the de facto standard for business spending,” continues Rindom.
“We are thrilled to partner with Jeppe and the rest of the Pleo team on their mission to reshape business spending across all verticals and geographies, and to help fuel their ambitious growth journey,” added Ken Fox, Founder and Managing Partner of Stripes.