Statement Raises $1.9 Million for Payments Marketplace for Small Businesses

Statement has raised 1.5 million pounds (about $1.9 million) for its platform that connects small businesses and payments providers.

The pre-seed funding round was led by venture capital (VC) fund Northzone.

“Statement, the platform helping small businesses save money on hidden card acceptance fees, has launched,” Northzone said in a Monday (July 3) post on LinkedIn. “They give [small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs)] control over unwanted fees and optimize their payment provider contracts.”

Statement’s payments marketplace for small businesses launched in beta Monday, Statement said in a Monday post on LinkedIn. It is beginning with merchants accepting payments in person in the United Kingdom and will expand to more merchants and payments methods in the coming months.

According to the post, the company’s founders, Chief Technology Officer Olivia Stannah and CEO Ed Hardy, aim to address a top pain point for SMBs: payments.

“Olivia Stannah and I have been working hard over the last six months to bring comparison to payments,” Hardy said in a Monday post on LinkedIn. “We all tap our card every day without a second thought, but for small businesses accepting card payments is still incredibly painful — finding the right payments provider takes 10 days on average. We shrink that down to a few minutes.”

The marketplace is designed to help merchants that are looking for a payments provider overcome the challenges of “hidden fees, opaque pricing, scary terminology and a clunky sales process,” according to the Statement website.

“We’re excited to do that in partnership with the U.K.’s leading providers, including some old friends at Worldpay,” Hardy said in his post. “Statement will also be powering some of the biggest comparison players, watch this space.”

PYMNTS research has found that merchants are expanding their digital capabilities to accommodate changes in consumer behavior.

Merchants are aware of consumers’ spiking interest in digital payments and fear that a failure to meet this demand will harm business, according to “Merchants Need Modern Payment Systems to Meet Consumer Demand,” the April edition of the “B2B and Digital Payments Tracker®,” a PYMNTS and American Express collaboration.

The report also found that more than 75% of merchants said consumers would be at least very likely to switch merchants because retailers are not providing enough modern capabilities, including alternative payment methods in stores.