US fintech Divvy bags $200 million in venture capital

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Divvy, a US-based fintech startup that helps businesses manage expenses, has secured a $200 million Series C round led by NEA with participation from Pelion Venture Partners and Insight Venture Partners, reports TechCrunch.

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This funding marks the third venture round within a year for the fast-growing startup, following a $10.5 million Series A last May and a $35 million Series B in July 2018, per CrunchBase.

Here’s what it means: Divvy’s mega funding is likely the result of its dizzying growth, and the latest capital injection should add fuel to its upward trajectory.

Divvy has increased its client base by over 300% in the past year. Divvy, which launched its platform in January 2018, currently counts 3,000 companies as clients — significantly higher than the 700 it had last summer, per VentureBeat. It’s also rapidly grown its employee footprint to 200 staff, up from 30 when it launched, per Forbes. And the firm is currently registering a 30% quarter-over-quarter increase in earnings, per TechCrunch.
Divvy’s rapid growth is likely tethered to its niche proposition. The startup’s expense management platform provides extensive functionality for businesses and their employees. Companies can give employees spending cards, and the platform enables them to approve employee expense requests in real time. Other functionalities include enabling businesses to create virtual credit cards, manage team spending, and produce automated expense reports.
And the startup’s free-to-use model — which produces revenue — is likely key in attracting customer and investor interest.Instead of charging fees for its product, Divvy, which partners with Wex Bank to issue Mastercard-branded cards, generates revenue by taking a cut of the interchange fees merchants are charged for transactions. This enables the startup to make its proposition more attractive to businesses, while its revenue-generating capability makes it more likely for investors to see its business model as sustainable.

The bigger picture: Divvy’s success is illustrative of fintechs’ sustained ability to unbundle and rebundle financial services to solve vexing pain points.

Expense management for businesses has long been a laborious and cumbersome process. Expense reporting systems are antiquated, often lacking the ability to give employers real-time access to employee spending or automatically file expenses. As a result, companies are susceptible to sloppy record keeping and laborious processes that waste vital resources, especially smaller businesses that lack the capacity to dedicate full-time staff to manage expense processes. The fact that Divvy has signed up so many companies in a short period of time highlights the addressable gap that existed for its product, which explains why investors continue to plow money into it.
Divvy’s growth is a testament to the wide addressable market these players have when it comes to disrupting and transforming financial services.We’ve seen numerous fintechs begin to emerge as market leaders across the finance value chain. And while certain segments, like retail banking or payments, are beginning to get crowded, we expect to see innovative startups that target other areas continue to flourish in their efforts to attract customers and investor capital alike.

Here’s the industry’s opinion, as told to Business Insider Intelligence:

"Divvy is a good example of a fintech that has leveraged technology to provide a simple solution to a real problem experienced by every business in the world. Addressing SMBs’ needs around different aspects of financial management, from cash management to access to funding, is a trend I am looking very closely at from an investment perspective, as we see the consumer market becoming more mature. Poor cash flow management is one of the biggest causes of failure for SMBs and supporting tech solutions that allow SMBs to run their business efficiently can have a large impact on the overall economy." — Stefania Ponzo, fintech specialist at Downing Ventures

"Divvy is a prime example of a fintech firm working to solve a real-world issue that so far traditional banks or organizations have failed to address. For too long the traditional financial products on offer have been very formulated and followed a similar pattern, resulting in the problem that the end user is having not being solved. In this case, by using a different model and new technology, Divvy is able to deliver a solution that eases substantial pain points for businesses. This is a trend that we would expect to see across the financial services sector: Financial services have to be able to solve the problems that customers are having." — Andrew Garvey, chief commercial officer at Countingup

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Source: Business Insider – feedback@businessinsider.com (Mekebeb Tesfaye)