Spain’s Payflow, a salary advance startup, banks $9.1M to fuel a super app growth strategy – TechCrunch

Based in Barcelona Payment flowYC-supported Salary: Pre-Fintech has launched a $ 9.1 million consecutive round of financial support for Neobank – raising its total business value to $ 13.6M since its inception in January 2020.

Investors in the roundup include Spanish Sea Ventures, Cash Flow New Supporter and Cathy Innovation in C. A mix of national and international funds leading the round, including the Entrepreneurship Fund; Participating with Force Over Mass Capital, Y Combinator and Rebel Fund.

Beginners’ Salary-Priority Service is sold to employers to provide their employees – companies should pay a certain portion of their salary in advance (as other start-up beginners do) instead of paying users for the Technology Commission.

The Payflow model claims to have won over its peers in trade unions and unions.

It also mentions it as a feature along with other salary advance initiatives.

“We are different from other subsidized companies because we have never used the service to charge a single employee (we are the first real employee benefits, paid for entirely by the company),” said co-founder Avashin Sukwani.

”[Payflow] It’s free for consumers and will always be that way, “added Benoit Menardo, co-founder.

Notice the high turnover among users – an average download rate of 40% and a high value for some customers up to 90% – which is 5-10x higher than other payroll platforms and other social benefits.

His approach also seems to be looking at the right boxes for employers – with more than 175 registered customers (covering 100,000 users).

Build a SaaS business model, and employers charge a standard fee based on the number of employees using the product.

Payment flow is targeting the product to larger enterprise customers. He says customers cover all industries but – as you might expect – take is high among Blue Colta employees.

“We host all industries, from restaurants to beginners to hospitals, but acceptance is best among Blue Colta staff,” says Sukwani.

Prepaid wages can help low-income workers get paid more than once a month, for example, to avoid falling into debt. At the same time, there may be some risks associated with quick access to wages, which may encourage negative financial turnover – say that if an employee loses his salary immediately, he will come to the end of the month with no money.

When asked about this, Payflow says there is a “security limit” in the employer dashboard if you “want to restrict use”.

“Most companies set this limit to around 50%, so employees always get at least 50% of their paycheck on a monthly basis,” says Menardo, “which allows them to make sure there are enough balance for rent and other necessary expenses.”

The beginner Series A funding is designed to expand Payflow’s global footprint.

He also plans to spend money on a product division to increase his transition to Neobank.

Some neo-banks are moving in a different direction – and closing paychecks as an additional feature (see Revolut).

With Fintech’s start-up game, it can go down to a variety of strategies and approaches to maximize customer engagement – after which there is a chance to offend the users of a well-known feature on banking services that are fully developed with the strong pull, financial support of previous feature success.

The initial Fintech competition can be very dynamic.

Although a set of users may be more loyal and less likely to change than others – and such public information may be used to identify start-up services and increase loyalty through a sticker feature on banking services, a low-cost bank customer base to sell a full set of services for years to come. Or, well, that’s Fintech’s dream.

Through the product Dave, Payflow is developing a “super app” to expand its feature set.

“In 2022, two characteristics [will be added] It strengthens the concept of b2b value by providing financial security for Blue Collar staff, ”said Menardo. “Later, by developing many b2c features [the plan for the app is] It is basically switching to Neobank.

Payroll is not specifying a timeline for upgrading its pay-per-view SaaS business directly to consumer Nebanbank, but Menardo says he wants to increase his customer base by more than 10 x. Users “

“We plan to launch our first d2c feature before the end of this year,” he added.

It also aims to boost its customer base in Spain by 5x to $ 3 million and spend $ 3 million on new housing.

In the face of market expansion, it plans to open up to two more markets outside of Spain, in addition to Chile and Colombia.

Its expansion is concentrated in Europe and Latvia.

It currently has pilots in Italy and Portugal. He also said he plans to open one more market this year – so it looks like it will grow to five out of three (currently) by five.