Illustration: Maura Losch/Axios
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.
