Payments and expense management firm Payhawk has added $100 million to its Series B round, now standing at $215 million, and in so much, provides the company with a $1 billion valuation and Bulgaria with its first unicorn.
As a testament to the company’s rapidly accelerating velocity, this Series B extension arrives only three months after the company’s initial announcement of $115 million, a round that was announced only 7 months since the closing of a $20 million Series A round.
Preceded only by now publicly listed UiPath, Payhawk’s Series B round is the second-largest ever of its kind for a B2B company in the CEE region, with the new funding fueling the addition of 60 senior software engineers in the Sofia office, alongside planned office openings in Amsterdam and Paris in March, and New York in September. The company reports that it’s well on track to triple the headcount from 100 to more than 300 staff members by the end of this year.
Co-founded in 2018 Payhawk aims to simplify the lives of the finance department, namely by unifying a series of disjointed tools used to manage cards, payments, invoices, and expenses. The startup acts as a one-stop-shop and reduces the manual processes, as well as provides finance teams the ability to keep a close eye on budgets, all in real-time.
Between April and November of last year, Payhawk reported an increase in transaction volumes by 663% and a continued growth rate of 45%+ month-on-month between September and October. Amongst its customer base, the startup counts brands A.T.U, Luxair, Flink, Viking Life, and Wagestream, and is providing services in some 30 off countries around the globe.
“We always knew that we could build a big company if we addressed a significant problem in a large market. The size of the opportunity still drives our growth and ambition today. Every employee that deals with company payments feels that there should be a better way to do it, but this huge problem was never tackled by a strong product team with a hardcore engineering background. This is what Payhawk brings to the market,” commented CEO and founder Hristo Borisov.
On becoming Bulgaria’s first startup to achieve unicorn status, the company says that it intends to leverage this success and become a catalyst for the Bulgarian tech ecosystem, and continue to attract and retain top industry talent.
Payhawk’s Series B extension round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with Sprints Capital, Endeavor Catalyst, HubSpot Ventures, and Jigsaw VC also participating. Existing investors including QED Investors and Earlybird Digital East also participated.
“Payhawk is more than just spend management software. It’s a one-stop-shop for finance teams to consolidate the previously disparate systems required to spend, track, process, and budget corporate funds. After getting to know the team for over a year, we’ve been blown away with their pace of product development, building the most comprehensive solution in the market in less than four years,” concluded Lightspeed’s Arsham Memarzadeh.
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