Main Highlights
- Comma has raised £4.34 million ($6 million) in a seed round led by Octopus Ventures and Connect Ventures.
- The firm enables small and micro companies to bulk-pay bills, wages, and taxes using existing high street small business bank accounts, saving them a significant amount of time and money in administration.
- The Comma app links to accounting systems and enables a company or their accountant to enter and maintain supplier bank data without requiring bank access.
- You can pay all of your bills, including wages, invoices, and expenses, all at once. Set up your payment run and then click pay.
Comma, an open banking mass payment business located in the United Kingdom, has raised £4.34 million ($6 million) in a seed round led by Octopus Ventures and Connect Ventures. Village Global, as well as the creators of Wagestream, Peter Briffett, and Portman Wills, joined them.
Comma enables small and micro companies to bulk-pay bills, wages, and taxes using existing high street small business bank accounts, saving them a significant amount of time and money in administration. This is because BACS is difficult to get and expensive, and virtual accounts need KYC, which complicates bookkeeping.
According to Comma, there was a significant surge in outsourced financial operations. The solution was made viable by the availability of open banking bulk payment APIs from numerous high street banks, which led to the firm gaining a lot more business.
How does the Comma app work?
The Comma app links to accounting systems (Xero, QuickBooks, Sage) and enables a company or their accountant to enter and maintain supplier bank data without requiring bank access. They can pay between 15 and 50 payees at the same time, and the system sends payments against invoices back to the accounting system to indicate what has been paid.
From excruciating to very excruciating. Comma allows you to pay bills, wages, and taxes in bulk with a single click, eliminating the need for corporate banking. Accountants may now assist customers in making payments without having access to bank accounts, thanks to developments in open banking.
Comma recognizes bills as paid and sends status updates to your accounting program. Keeping everything on the same page. Comma works across all of your devices; start on your PC and continue on your phone. Comma makes it simple for accountants and bookkeepers to generate and share payment runs with their customers, allowing them to pay those runs in bulk on their phone or PC using their current bank account.
Batch payments enabled by open banking technology are critical to the future of this, and Comma is collaborating with all major UK banks to deliver the best solutions and push the frontiers of open banking. You can pay all of your bills, including wages, invoices, and expenses, all at once. Set up your payment run and then click pay.
There is no need to be added to the mandate or set up a virtual account to set up payment runs outside of the bank. There is no danger and only gain. You recommend the payment run, but your customer is the final decision maker in the process.
Tom Beckenham’s Verdicts
“I worked as the COO of a firm that was invoicing across continents and paying hundreds of employees,” said founder Tom Beckenham. It was a laborious procedure. It dawned on me that larger corporations had corporate banking and payment management systems. Small firms, on the other hand, did not and were generally neglected. I noticed that traditional methods of solving the problem for small businesses had high setup costs, effectively eliminating the majority of the market.”
“I noticed that traditional methods of solving the problem for small businesses had high setup costs, effectively eliminating the majority of the market. By the end of the quarter, we will have reached £1 million every week.”
To some degree, the firm competes with Credec, Telleroo, and BACS bureaus like ADP. Melio in the United States is the closest international comparison. In France, Libeo offers a comparable service.
