Traxpay AG has announced $4 million in new venture funding, as well as its intention to enter the United States B2B payments market. It will set up a U.S. headquarters in California and hire an American as CEO. Traxpay has existed in Germany for several years, apparently emerging from a combination of interests by individuals with experience at Accenture and SAP and assorted banks and payment companies. Some of those same firms seem to have been early investors, or at least contributors to development activities. Only one customer is cited, the German debt collection firm EOS. According to Ingrid Lunden of TechCrunch:
Traxpay offers a cloud-based platform that it says provides full transparency on how your funds get transferred, with the funds stored in separate bank accounts used exclusively for a company’s own payments — effectively that means more security for a company to be able to withdraw funds without any risk of not being able to meet the payment (as might happen with, say, a troubled bank). Payments, notably, get made in real time with instant access to funds by the receiving company.
At this point, that is about as much information as Traxpay is willing to put into the public domain. Its website is surprisingly sparse. Berlin-based Earlybird Venture Capital provided the funding, and claims it evaluated 10 companies in the B2B payments market before choosing to invest in Traxpay. According to Jason Whittmire, partner at Earlybird:
Traxpay’s unique blend of enterprise software, payments and banking expertise will deliver one of the most disruptive technology solutions since Paypal reshaped the B2C payments market. Moreover, we believe Traxpay has the potential to become the de-facto B2B online payment network.
One might have expected more than 10 candidates in the B2B payments market today. Perhaps the functional definition is a bit narrower than one might have imagined, since there is little detail on what Traxpay will really do. Time will tell, and another entrant in an already crowded field will only improve the offerings of the competitors.
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