FinTech Startup, Adfin Builds An Invoice Payment Solution

U.K. fintech startup, Adfin, is building a solution for facilitating invoice payment for businesses. TechCrunch reported that the Adfin payment solution will allow users to send payment requests through text, WhatsApp, and email.

“Merchants want to get paid as fast as possible, as cheaply as possible, and with less effort. We are building a bunch of capabilities to maximize the timing when people get paid and minimize the cost of that,” Adfin co-founder and CTO, Ciprian Diaconasu said.

The startup has raised $4.9 million to develop the Adfin fix bill payments solution. Its seed funding round was led by Visionaries Club and Index Ventures. A number of angel investors also participated in the round. They include Adyen founder, Thijn Lamers, Checkout.com founder, Guillaume Pousaz, Mambu co-founder, Eugene Danilkis, and Tiller co-founder, Josef Bovet.

Payment Process

Small businesses and sole traders, including consultants, accountants, and lawyers, must invoice customers and provide bank details to get paid. They must keep tabs on incoming payments and reconcile them to ensure they get paid for all the services or products.

Some business owners choose to set up direct debit. But even with this, it’s difficult to convince customers to allow direct withdrawals from their bank accounts. Card payments also attract high processing fees.

“The average consumer only makes 21 e-commerce purchases a year. All the buzz has been around e-commerce, but for your average legal practice or accountancy firm, their payments are stuck in the ’90s — bank transfers, card payments taken over the phone, paying really high fees,” Tom Pope, Adfin co-founder and CEO said.

According to Adfin, sole proprietors and small businesses don’t want to spend time thinking about payment methods. All they want is to get paid fast.

Invoice Management

Adfin payment platform has been conceptualized as an invoice management and payment platform. It will simplify important business administration tasks and make getting paid seamless.

Once business owners upload invoices to the Adfin small companies payments platform, the system will automatically display the payment method. This decision will be determined by the invoice amount and whether it’s a new customer or a returning one.

“Our customers are not payment nerds. I think the fact that they are not payments nerds has probably led to them being a little bit taken advantage of, if I’m honest. With Adfin, we just offer you payments. We get you paid and we handle the payment mix. It’s in our interest to be trying to get your success rate as high as possible and your costs as low as possible,” Pope added.

The Adfin bill payments for sole traders solution also supports the pay-by-bank option via card and open banking payments. This means that customers can make payment through Google Pay and Apple Pay. Where customers fail to make immediate payment, businesses can automate reminders on the fintech platform.

Central Repository

Adfin serves as a central repository of all business invoices. Businesses can use it to track pending invoices to see whether they’ve been paid or not. Currently, the fintech platform charges 1% for every successful payment irrespective of the payment method used.