Balance, the platform shifting B2B commerce online, secured $25m in Series A

By Gaia Lamperti

Israeli B2B e-commerce payments company Balance has raised $25 million in its Series A funding round, which was led by Ribbit Capital, a fund that has previously invested in Robinhood and Coinbase. Other investors included women-led fund Avid Ventures, Stripe, Y Combinator and Upwest as well as individual investors among which Square and PayPal employees and executives.

Balance aims to fill the market gap in shifting B2B commerce online. According to the company’s data, still 92% of B2B transactions are currently conducted offline, for a total value of over $2 trillion, twice as much as the total amount of consumer retail e-commerce.

The firm is implementing a “consumer-like” platform to improve the online checkout experience for its consumers which range from start-ups to publicly traded marketplaces and e-commerce enterprises across industries, including steel, freight, construction, food ordering, medical supply, and apparel.

“We are at the very early beginnings of a massive shift from offline to online, across industries,” said Balance Founder and CEO Bar Geron. He explained that B2B payments have historically differed from B2C primarily because they do not take place at the point of sale but within 30 days.

“Most online business purchases today are made via credit card, while transactions via the preferred methods for most businesses — like wires, checks, and ACH — remain offline,” Geron added. “This is because the process is incredibly challenging, often involving offline quotes and invoices, multiple phone calls and emails, and long payment delays. Balance manages all of this complexity behind an elegant checkout experience and makes offering flexible payments methods and terms as easy as using a credit card.”

Fast and secure online payments on trading platforms have now become the standard expectation for consumers, but most B2B trade keeps being conducted offline resulting in high cost of living and economic inefficiencies across the world. The trend is beginning to change among inter-business trading due to the rapid growth of online solutions suiting the needs of business markets, like in the case of Balance.

The company was launched in early 2020 and recruited its initial funding round through the Y Combinator accelerator and later securing $5.5 million. It now employs about 30 people across its offices in Tel Aviv and New York. One of the company’s main investors is American FinTech giant Stripe which, while being a competitor, cooperates with it as an investor and consultant.

The platform offers flexible payments methods, among which ACH, wire, and checks as well as real-time net terms at checkout. Merchants get an immediate payout which is always reconciled like with credit cards and marketplaces are enabled with automated vendor disbursement and reconciliation management. In February they launched a self-serve digital checkout, the first for onlineB2B companies.

Balance is already embedded in some of the world’s leading e-commerce sites including Magento, BigCommerce, Quickbooks and the platform will soon also work with Salesforce and Shopify.