Last week YayPay, a San Francisco-based fintech startup with Ukrainian roots, announced the completion of a $5.3 million round of funding.
The round was led by QED Investors along with co-investors Birchmere and Fifth Third Capital, the direct equity investment subsidiary of Fifth Third Bancorp, with support from 500 Fintech Fund, Aspect Ventures, Gaingels, Techstars, 408 Ventures and Zelkova.
The company aims to bring automation to the back-office finance operations of small and mid-sized enterprises.
YayPay accelerates cash flows and improves forecasting by automating accounts receivables management. YayPay’s finance workflow software leverages data and automatic payment communications to accelerate collections, improve customer relationships, and predict cash.
The platform is underpinned by big data and machine learning algorithms that analyze transactional and behavioral patterns.
YayPay claims that its clients have reduced Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) by up to 25% while dramatically improving A/R productivity. This is “because collection teams can more accurately monitor cash inflow and proactively work with slow-paying clients.”
Among YayPay’s rivals are BillTrust and HighRadius. But YayPay’s distinctive advantage lies is the uses of “the most advanced automation technologies, including machine learning. Besides, our interface is more user-friendly, which is very untypical of this [enterprise apps] sector,” Eugene Vyborov, YayPay’s CTO, told Ukraine Digital News.
Australian-American-Ukrainian management
The last round of funding will allow the startup “to recruit more great talent, roll out a full suite of intelligent order-to-cash automation software, and increase sales activities.”
“As of today, we primarily seek to enhance our sales department and processes, as well as to accelerate the company’s growth. As for the product, we are continuing to develop the system and enrich it with new modules,” Vyborov told Ukraine Digital News.
Founded in 2015 by Australian-American entrepreneur Anthony Venus (CEO) and a figure of the Ukrainian tech scene, Eugene Vyborov, the company released its first software module in January 2017. It has collected over $100 million in receivables, and processed more than 150,000 invoices.
YayPay’s R&D office is located in two Ukrainian cities — Dnipro (formerly known as Dnipropetrovsk), Central Ukraine, and Kyiv (Kiev), with seven people currently working there.
However, the Kyiv office is expected to employ twenty people in just a year, Vyborov said.
Currently, the company covers solely the US market, although “global companies with offices in Europe pay attention to our services,” said Vyborov. The company may consider entering other markets in the future.
As the entrepreneur told Ukraine Digital News, YayPay previously attracted investment from a number of business angels, including funding provided by the founders, as well as from TechStars and 500 Startups. However, the entrepreneur hasn’t disclosed neither the amount nor the dates of the deals.
