Balance gets $350M to help it extend credit to others

Balance, a B2B payments company, aims to ease e-commerce companies’ finance constraints with a $350 million facility from credit firm Viola Credit, CEO Bar Geron tells Axios.

Why it matters: At a time when financing is hard to come by, firms that help companies preserve working capital and keep operations running smoothly are in demand.

What’s happening: Balance’s new funding will help it expand its trade credit support to B2B merchants and marketplaces.

• The funding will also allow Balance to increase its financing capabilities and scale its net terms product.

Details: The revolving credit facility will allow its merchants to pay in 30-day payment terms, 60-day payment terms, Geron says.

• “It’s a short term enabler for retailers to pay how they want in the time they need to pay,” he says.

Zoom in: Balance has seen strong demand for its term offering, Geron says.

• “Because the demand surpassed our funding in a significant way, we decided to partner with finance partners to just scale it to levels of billions of dollars a year because this is the incoming that we see,” he says.

How it works: Using Balance, merchants can pay their vendors through one platform, instantly, Geron says.

• Juggling various money channels at different times makes it difficult for merchants to manage and to scale, Geron says.
• With Balance, “the retailers are getting all the flexibility they need from the offline space to pay online, self serve.”

Zoom out: Demand has grown because “B2B that is moving online is becoming more and more sophisticated,” Geron says.

• “So we're seeing steel being sold online, we're seeing textiles selling online, we see chemicals being sold online,” he says

Context: The company, which was founded in 2020 by PayPal alums Geron and Yoni Shuster serves hundreds of B2B merchants.

• These include manufacturers, distributors and wholesalers that sell to retail businesses, as well as marketplaces, it says.
• It has raised $87 million to date, closing its Series B in July in a round led by Forerunner Ventures.

The bottom line: “I want it to be a no-brainer for B2B to be self-serve,” Geron says, adding “B2B payments should have the same level of experience as the consumer side.”