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Settle books $145M credit facility from Silicon Valley Bank

Ryan Lawler
Jul 25, 2023
Illustration of piggy bank with sunglasses. Dollar bills sticking out of the piggy bank.

Illustration: Eniola Odetunde/Axios

Cash-flow management firm Settle has secured up to $145 million in a new credit facility from Silicon Valley Bank, the startup tells Axios exclusively.

Driving the news: The funds will be used to expand its ability to offer working capital to consumer brands and e-commerce businesses.

How it works: Settle provides a suite of cashflow-management tools, including bill pay, invoice tracking and accounts payable management, that are optimized to help e-commerce brands manage their finances.

  • Crucially, the startup also offers financing options to those businesses to bridge the gap between inventory purchases and product sales.
  • To date, the company has originated over $1 billion of working capital loans.

Between the lines: The additional credit facility will allow Settle to expand the amount of financing it can offer, and enable it to go after some larger customers.

  • "The last thing I want to do is work with someone that we got pretty early on and started scaling with them, then saying, 'We can't support you anymore,'" Settle CEO Alek Koenig says.
  • "This is key, so that we can go a little bit more upmarket with our more significant customers," he added.
  • The company did not offer specifics on the size of financings it supports.

The intrigue: While Settle began talking with SVB before its collapse, the deal was finalized in June — i.e., after the bank's sale to First Citizens Bank.

  • "At the time, we were just like, 'Well, this isn't going to happen, but we're so close to the finish line, let's just give it a shot,'" Koenig says. "It turns out, they were still 100% aligned and able to do it."

Of note: The new financing comes on top of a $280 million revolving credit facility from Citibank and Atalaya that Settle secured last year.

  • Settle has also raised $100 million in equity financing from investors that include Ribbit Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Caffeinated Capital, Stripes, Better Tomorrow Ventures, Founders Fund, SciFi Ventures, Citi Ventures, and Activant Capital.
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