Ledge, a fully automated, no-code payments command center built to empower CFOs and their finance teams, announced that it has “emerged from stealth with $9M in Seed funding led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) as well as Vertex Ventures, FJ Labs and existing investors Picus Capital.”
With this investment, Ledge will “enhance its automated finance operations platform and introduce greater treasury management capabilities to equip finance teams with the instant insights they need to make strategic decisions.”
The proceeds from the investment round will also be “used to expand its team and product globally with a focus on North America.”
The rapid adoption of digital payments by consumers and companies alike “has been crucial to business growth, yet it has become an insurmountable challenge for finance teams.”
Finance departments are “struggling to manually reconcile the sheer volume of incoming and outgoing transactions, are dealing with poor payments visibility, and are facing an increased risk of financial losses and an inability to pass audits.”
The result: 40% of finance teams’ time is “spent processing transactions, instead of devoting time to strategic initiatives.”
The fragmented data “caused by a lack of communication between the number of payment processors, banks, ERPs, and databases that make up a company’s payments stack is also crippling with 48% of finance teams reporting that it is the largest impediment to them closing their books.”
Ledge’s payments command center “solves these critical business problems by automating the entire payment lifecycle.” By centralizing all payments data, Ledge “improves visibility, dramatically lowers the risk of losses, and reduces operational costs, all without requiring engineering support.”
With pre-integrated access to all major banks, payment processors, ERPs, and billing solutions, Ledge’s platform seamlessly “connects directly to companies’ existing data, payments, and banking infrastructures enabling a company to get up and running within minutes.”
The solution “aggregates balances across providers to present a real-time snapshot of companies’ cash positions and provides treasury insights and recommendations that enable teams to make smarter finance decisions.”
Ledge’s Big Data Pipeline” aggregates and normalizes data from multiple sources, and its Reconciliation Engine automates multi-way reconciliation, enables continuous real-time accounting and ledgering, and empowers teams to immediately identify and resolve problematic transactions.”
Tal Kirschenbaum, Ledge‘s Co-founder and CEO, said:
“We saw first hand in previous roles that finance teams are losing visibility over payments, losing control of their overall books, and losing crucial time for strategic initiatives, which is resulting in a hit to their bottom lines. While many CFOs feel like they are dealing with a hair-on-fire challenge as they face an onslaught of mass digital payments being paid in and out, we believe that utilizing the right technology can transform this challenge into a powerful driver of business growth. Our solution unlocks the immense potential of the data behind digital payments. We’re putting finance teams back in control by automating time-consuming tasks while also harnessing AI and the latest tech to uncover high-value business insights currently hidden amongst vast quantities of payments data.”
Jonathan Golden, Partner at NEA, said:
“The adoption of digital payments presents challenges for nearly every sector, and at NEA, we are dedicated to investing in companies that harness best-in-class technology to solve industry-wide challenges. Businesses face massive complexities with current payments setup—something I experienced firsthand when leading payment products at Airbnb—which can result in the costly diversion of R&D efforts. By providing a comprehensive, automated solution tailored for the finance department, Ledge enables smarter finance decisions while relieving the burden from engineering teams, allowing them to focus on their core role—building and enhancing the business’s revenue-generating products.”
Ledge has been working with companies across multiple different segments “including marketplaces, platforms, and SaaS companies. Ledge’s strategic investors include founders from fintech giants Payoneer, Fundbox, Papaya Global, Melio, and Mesh Payments.”
