Paris, 30th January 2018 – Spendesk, a fintech solution that helps businesses manage their spending, has raised an €8 million Series A round led by Index Ventures, with participation from existing investors. The funds will be used to accelerate product development and expand across Europe.
Founded in 2016 and based in Paris, Spendesk rethinks the way employees make company purchases and the way businesses manage all expenses. Instead of wasting time on painful expense reports, tedious approval processes and sharing of company credit cards, Spendesk has developed an innovative solution that gives businesses all the control they require and employees the autonomy they need to get the job done.
Spendesk addresses a widespread frustration faced by all types of businesses: making and processing a simple payment can be an administrative burden for both operational and finance teams. According to research by JP Morgan, an employee waits on average 17.2 days to complete a purchase, costing €57 per transaction in lost productivity with a traditional process.[1] “In most companies, expense management and team purchases are handled with outdated, paper-based processes. Booking a plane ticket online, paying at a restaurant or settling a supplier invoice are frequent and essential actions that should be as easy as checking your inbox,” says Rodolphe Ardant, Spendesk co-founder and CEO.
Employees of Spendesk clients use the SaaS solution to make purchase requests, instantly access virtual cards to pay online or scan their receipts when paying in-person with their prepaid Mastercard® card. They have full autonomy within the pre-defined company’s spending limits and benefit from transparent approval flows. Finance teams monitor spending in real time and have immediate visibility over all company spending. They save time on repetitive bookkeeping tasks by automating receipt recovery and VAT extraction. All payments are instantly categorised, matched with invoices and exported into the company’s accounting software. Spendesk clients do away with the time-consuming and loathed expense reports and the need for managing reimbursements.
Since its inception, Spendesk has grown rapidly, adding new features and new clients at a record speed. With more than €40 million spent through the Spendesk platform, its SaaS solution has already been adopted by more than 600 companies across Europe in less than 12 months. “Our ambition is to create the perfect tool for finance teams to handle all their payment workflows. Ultimately, finance departments should only use their bank account, their accounting software and Spendesk,” says Ardant.
“Spendesk has created a seamless product that their customers love, which is not an easy task when you talk about expenses,” said Dominique Vidal, partner at Index Ventures, a venture capital firm that has backed many leading fintech companies including Adyen, Funding Circle and Robinhood. “Whilst many other solutions have digitised the expense management process, Spendesk has built an entirely new workflow to manage spending across the company.”
This funding round is led by Index Ventures with the participation of business angels such as Michael Benabou, co-founder of Vente Privée, Laurent Asscher and Showpad cofounders – Louis Jonckheere and Pieterjan Bouten – and comes just 12 months after a seed round of €2 million in January 2017, bringing the total amount raised to €10million.
About Spendesk
Created in August 2016, Spendesk was co-founded by Rodolphe Ardant, Jordane Giuly and Guilhem Bellion within eFounders startup studio (which launched Mailjet, TextMaster, Mention, Front and Aircall). Spendesk provides a dedicated SaaS solution for business spend management.
[1] Source: Purchasing Card Spend Benchmarks – JP Morgan Chase Commercial Banking
