Center Raises $15M to Expand SMB Expense Management Offerings

Expense management software company Center has raised $15 million in a Series B round and said it will use the new capital to expand its product offerings and support the evolving needs of small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs). 

This funding round brought the company’s total capital raised to $110 million, Center said Wednesday (Oct. 26) in a press release. 

Center has also appointed Clear Co-founder and President Ken Cornick to its board of directors on the heels of the funding round, joining Center Executive Chairman and Co-founder Steve Singh, according to the press release. 

“Center’s success is demonstrated by strong adoption and retention, and I look forward to seeing the team continue to empower customers with innovative solutions for all of their expense management needs,” Cornick said in the release. 

Center’s core offering is an integrated corporate card and spend management tool called Center Expense that captures spend as it happens and provides real-time visibility and flexible spend controls, the release said. 

Commonly used by SMBs, the product is offered with a usage-based pricing model that requires no upfront or ongoing investment, per the release. 

“Transparency and timeliness of expenses are essential for leaders to make actionable decisions about their business,” Cornick said in the release. “Center delivers a modern tool that streamlines and automates the expense process, addressing the pain points of an underserved [SMB] market wanting to tighten control of the bottom line.” 

The challenges involved in accounting for employee spend have grown even greater, thanks to remote workforces and the need for professionals to make purchases for home offices in a siloed setting, Center CEO Naveen Singh told PYMNTS in an interview posted in August 2020. 

Read more: Maintaining Control When Employee Spend Looks More Like Procurement 

According to Singh, the only way to truly gain visibility into employee spend is through real-time data.