The Rising Small Business Spend Management Trend Has Not Been Lost on Investors

Business services startup Pleo, which offers expense management tools and smart company cards for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), has secured $200 million in a Series C round at a $4.7 billion valuation, nearly triple its previous value.

The Danish startup previously joined the unicorn club in July after it raised $150 million led by Bain Capital Ventures and Thrive Capital, reaching a valuation of $1.7 billion and bringing its total funding to $350 million.

Read more: Danish Startup Pleo Closes $150M Funding Deal at $1.7 Billion Valuation

With this new valuation, the FinTech unicorn has become the largest spend management company in Europe, and the startup with one of the largest-ever Series C rounds in the region.

“The fact is that we didn’t need to continue to raise this year – but our Series C saw such demand that this extension was made possible. We have big ambitions to grow further across Europe, helping more businesses to solve their spending challenges and empower their teams,” Pleo’s Co-founder and CEO Jeppe Rindom said in a statement.

He added: “The money helps, but we’re not complacent. We’ll continue being Pleo: pushing forward, doubling our 400-strong team, iterating our product, building more tools and features, taking us from invoice management and employee reimbursement into lending and beyond. It’s a hugely exciting time, and we look forward to the next stage of Pleo’s growth.”

Founded in 2015, the Copenhagen-based firm counts more than 20,000 corporate clients in Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Spain, Ireland and the U.K., and generates revenue primarily from credit card interchange fees — about 70% — with paid subscriptions bringing in the rest.

As a sign of increasing growth, the FinTech scale-up saw up to 1,000 new customers getting started with Pleo every month in the last six months, driven by the launch of a freemium model in October for customers in the U.K., Ireland, Sweden and Denmark.

According to the firm, the fresh round of capital will go toward “a massive” rollout across 15 new territories in Europe next year, starting with Austria and followed by Finland, the Netherlands, France and Portugal. The company then plans to reach over 20 countries by 2023 and to acquire one million engaged users by the end of 2025.

See also: Pleo Debuts ‘Bills’ to Digitize SMB Invoicing

Overall, it’s been a busy year for the business expenses company, starting in April, when it added additional business services for invoice management through the addition of a new feature, titled Bills.

As PYMNTS reported, the feature allows SMBs to forward their invoices to a Pleo Bills email address, where the documents are processed using optical character recognition (OCR) technology and prepared for payment. Pleo also cross-references the invoices for duplicates and authenticity before they can be approved for payment.

And last year, the company launched an expense management tool bundled under the brand Pleo Pocket to help businesses centralize employee spending data, including mileage costs, reimbursements and ATM withdrawals, as well as set limits on employee spend.

More details: Pleo Launches Expense Management Tool Pleo Pocket