Cherry gets $4 million for payments automation

Cherry, a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based payments and invoice tracking company, raised $4 million in seed funding led by NFX, the company tells Axios exclusively.

Why it matters: Much of the SMB market currently still uses paper checks to make payments to vendors.

Details: Now valued at about $20 million, Cherry integrates into a company's existing accounting software and bank so customers do not need to learn a new system and can onboard customers in minutes, says Cherry CEO Moshe Teitelbaum.

• Cherry allows its users to pay for invoices directly from their accounting software.
• When a customer is ready to make a payment, Cherry takes care of getting the vendor's banking information and automates the transfer of necessary invoice records.
• That also allows both vendor and payor to track payments. For a management company paying out of multiple entities, that also helps ensure they aren't making double payments.
• Cherry is currently focused on mid-sized businesses with complex finances — ones with multiple bank accounts or several entities, such as nursing home or rental home operators.

How it works: The company charges a flat fee of $1.50 to $2.50 per transaction and also makes some revenue from interchange.

• It's processed some $300 million in transactions.

The big picture: Companies like Intuit are eyeing ways to automate the messy payments and invoicing process for SMBs, which in theory could eventually make Cherry redundant for users of Intuit's Quickbooks.

• But Cherry also integrates with more industry specific accounting software makers like PointClickCare (for nursing homes) and Yardi (for real estate management) — with Teitelbaum betting that Cherry's ability to connect with various systems rather than creating a walled garden will be its winning ticket.