Fintech Paytron scores $250,000 from CBA’s x15ventures

Sydney fintech Paytron has won the Xccelerate 2022 run by the Commonwealth Bank’s x15ventures, landing a $250,000 SAFE note.

Paytron, a full-suite workflows and spend management platform, was chosen from four finalists focus on payments, including Cape, Persollo and YouPay, pitching to the investment committee last night.

The deal with x15ventures gives the fintech access to the CBA ecosystem to ramp up its growth.

It originally launched last year into the SMB market as a multi-currency payments startup  after raising $4.35 million in a Seed round backed by Carthona Capital and Germany’s Picus Capital.

Co-founders and former banking execs Jaco Veldsman and Francois Henrion set out to address the pain point of small businesspeople dealing too much paperwork to manage their international payments.

The fintech, which is integrated with Xero, started out as an all-in-one financial cloud solution that allows businesses to approve, manage and pay bills in multiple currencies and is designed to fill the gap between smaller businesses and large organisations that have access to top-end financial services.
It uses workflows to simplify the way accountants, mid-market companies and enterprises manage transactions like accounts payable, international transfers, and payroll

Veldsman said the platform now includes automated invoice capture, batch payments, and corporate cards with built-in expense management.

“Fintechs, payments companies and banks working together is key to solving workflow problems for businesses of all sizes. If we don’t work together, we cannot solve the problem completely. It’s as simple as that,” he said.

“A pathway to partnership with CBA is incredibly exciting – and means we can explore ways to bring best-of-breed workflows together with Australia’s leading bank. The opportunity x15 provides for accelerated engagement between a venture like Paytron and a company of CBA’s scale and brand is unique, even without the investment.”

x15 portfolio director, Laura Faulconer said that among the initial 50 startups they assessed before narrowing it down to a final four, the program attracted an exceptional quality of ventures

“The hands-on process of working with each team enabled us to get a deeper understanding of the points of alignment that could be built on towards strategic partnership,” she said.

“The Paytron team understand the pain points of their customers, which is proven by the short sales cycles they are seeing from notoriously slow to procure companies.”

It’s the third year x15ventures has held the Xccelerate program, having backed givvable and OwnHome in 2020, and Splashup last year.

Managing Director Toby Norton-Smith said there are huge opportunities for both the corporate and venture worlds when the collaboration is done well.

“Paytron has the vision, ambition and maturity to reap the benefits of a future strategic partnership with the bank,” he said.