Business payments are incredibly clunky!
The process of making and receiving business payments remains largely manual, which makes it expensive and highly inefficient for businesses. Invoices are also not standardized and are typically issued and received manually, which increases the administrative burden on business owners, taking more time and effort that can be invested into their businesses.
Unlike consumer payments, that is C2B (consumer to business) or P2P (person to person) – B2B payments tend to have larger transaction sizes and volumes. As of 2020, B2B payments make up $127T of payment flows and are expected to hit $200T by 2028.
You will be right to wonder why most of the innovation in payments is then centered on consumers if the size of the B2B payments market is so much more significant. Due to the lack of innovation with B2B payments, businesses still have to depend on older rails and infrastructure, inhibiting business growth.
Our recent report, which included the surveyed opinions of more than 1,000 business owners from Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and Egypt, highlighted that 44 percent of businesses still have to wait more than 24 hours to receive payments from business customers and partners. 34 percent take up to 7 days to receive payments, 17 percent take up to 30 days and 3 percent take more than 30 days to receive business payments. This presents a significant challenge for businesses, who often cannot maximize sales and growth opportunities available to them due to cash flow restrictions induced by complex payment processes.
Since going live in January 2022, we’ve seen great traction with FMCG distributors and finance teams of midsize and enterprise businesses, helping them to digitize and simplify the way money moves between them and their business partners. FMCG distributors can onboard retailers in their network on the Duplo platform, making it easier for them to collect payments digitally and access real-time insights into business performance. They can also automate payments to vendors, manufacturers, and suppliers, with instant payments enabling them to transact in larger quantities.
For finance teams, Duplo’s end-to-end solution automates the back office processes of generating and processing invoices, receiving and approving bills, collecting and disbursing funds, and completing account reconciliation. Duplo works seamlessly with all major accounting, and ERP platforms such as Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, QuickBooks, and Sage, and payments processed through Duplo are automatically synced with these platforms in real-time. With Duplo, businesses can cut time spent on admin tasks such as account reconciliation by up to 50 percent and reduce payment-related costs by up to 85 percent.
We’ve been growing rapidly. In the last 3 months, the company has increased the number of businesses on its platform by 1000%. Total Payment Volume has also increased by 4200% in the last 5 months.
Our oversubscribed seed round
Today, we announce an oversubscribed $4.3 million seed raise from a coalition of investors and angels. 45 investors invested in this round and have bought into the vision and mission of the company.
Our seed funding round included participation from Liquid2 Ventures, Soma Capital, Tribe Capital, Commerce Ventures, Basecamp Fund, and Y Combinator. Oui Capital also re-invested after participating in the previous round.
We’re thankful to our team, early adopters, and investors for their help and support on the journey so far. There’s much more to come, and if you’d like to join us, we’re hiring! If you’re looking to simplify your business payments, sign up here.
