B2B buy now, pay later startup Two raises €18M

Two, a payments startup specializing in B2B commerce transactions, raised €18 million in Series A funding led by Shine Capital and Antler

Why it matters: Two wants to make purchases between businesses seamless by taking care of the fraud and underwriting risks inherent in large B2B transactions, while also paying sellers upfront.

• According to Two founder Andreas Mjelde, the business has three main components: fraud detection, credit decisioning and managing the money flows between buyer and seller.
• "We don't think a merchant that sells B2B should need to manage working capital or risk or any of these processes," Mjelde says.
• The company partners with banks and other capital providers to pay sellers while buyers pay on terms similar to consumer BNPL services.
• Two works with small and medium-sized merchants in the UK, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands. And through a partnership with Allianz and Santander, it can support large, multinational merchants across Europe and North America,

Between the lines: Before Two, Mjelde was the founder and CEO of Linio.com, one of the largest e-commerce marketplaces in LatAm.

• It was there that Mjelde got to know the pain points of B2B payments, as about 20% of its sales were to business customers.
• "B2B customers really want to move online. But you cannot serve them with a manual, old-school way of doing business," he says.

Of note: Other investors in Two include Sequoia Capital, Day One Ventures, Alumni Ventures, LocalGlobe, The Visionaries Club and Alliance VC.