Highlights:
- Tribal provides credit cards to startups and SMBs.
- The company plans to use the funds in establishing the team in Mexico.
Introduction:
The B2B payments domain has seen a significant rise in demand along with investor interest. Since the onset of covid-19 pandemic businesses have been trying to find out the ways to send payments across digitally. The challenges have become tougher for dealing with cross border payments.
The startups that were formed prior to pandemic derives benefit from the shift. One such startup called Tribal Credit launches its beta in late 2019. It provides payment products for startups and small to medium sized businesses for emerging markets.
About raising the fund:
Tribal credit announces today that it has raised dollar 34.3 million in a combined Series-A and a debt round. The investors include QED Investors and Partners for Growth (PFG). Existing investors like BECO Capital, Global Ventures, OTG Ventures, and Endure Capital are the participants. Their participation came along with a new investor Endeavour Catalyst.
The raise follows 10-times year-over-year growth according to CEO and co-founder Amr Shady. Stellar Development Foundation provides $3 million to Tribal as a part of investment. Stellar is a nonprofit organisation that supports the development and growth of open source Stellar blockchain network.
How Tribal functions:
Tribal uses a proprietary AI driven underwriting approval process for revaluation of businesses. This sends approval for credit lines after the evaluation process. After that the businesses can use the credit lines to spend on various Tribal products, cards and Tribal pay.
Tribal card is a business Visa Card where users can create physical and virtual multi currency cards. Tribal pay allows the users to make payments to people who don’t accept credit cards.
The company says its value proposition is not only in its ability to provide virtual and physical corporate cards. It also includes a digital platform that allows the founders and CFOs to provide access to and manage the spend of distributed teams.
Statement from Amr Shady:
“We’ve seen more demand for making B2B online payments amidst the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, with many SMEs migrating to digital and spending more on online products and services,” Shady said. “Companies in this new economy are digital and global first. The need for a corporate card was accelerated. As card spend grew during the pandemic, this meant greater liability on founders’ using their personal cards, or other competing cards linked to their personal credit.”
He says tribal underwrites the company without affecting the founders’ credit. Another catalyst for its product was the pandemic that still forces teams to work remotely.
It goes without saying that tribal is not the only company that offers credit cards for startups. Why companies are similar in their offerings there is a distinct difference according to Shady.
“Emerging market SMEs have different pains, particularly when it comes to cross-border payments,” says Shady.
The newly acquired capital will go towards the acceleration of its growth in the region of Latin America and Mexico. But specifically the efforts will be towards the team based in Mexico. Meantime the dead will fuel the company’s customers growing credit lines according to Shady.
“We have invested heavily in our product over the past year,” Shady said. “We’re the first mover in our segment in LatAm with a diverse suite of SME products that includes corporate cards, wire payments and treasury services. We’re incredibly excited by the future ahead of us in Mexico and beyond.”
