Tranch, a new London-based buy now pay later (BNPL) platform for SaaS sellers and professional services providers, is coming out of stealth, having raised £3.5 million in pre-seed equity and debt funding
The funding round is led by Flash Ventures, the pre-seed investor behind companies including Spenmo, Everstox and Voly, and Global Founders Capital. Tranch is also backed by Y Combinator and will join YC’s Summer 2022 cohort as the startup gears up to launch in the US later this year. The round includes a debt facility from Columbia Lake Partners.
Tranch combines traditional credit reports with open banking to provide a way for suppliers to offer their end-customers flexible payment terms on contracts worth £10,000 to £250,000, while they themselves get paid upfront, faster.
Instead of settling invoices in full within a standard 30 to 90 day term, an end-customer that chooses to ‘Pay with Tranch’ can spread the cost of their contracts over six to 12 months.
Tranch was founded in London in 2021 by Philip Kelvin and Beau Allison, former CFO and head of engineering respectively of proptech startup Trussle, which was acquired by US mortgage bropker Better HoldCo in July last year.
Kelivin says: “My time as a scaleup CFO made me realise just how inflexible payment options can be for crucial SaaS tools and other business services, and how detrimental this lack of choice and payment ownership can be on thousands of companies. ‘Pay with Tranch’ solves that huge and costly problem, by putting flexibility and choice at the heart of the payments process in a way that works simply and favourably for both suppliers and buyers.”
He says proceeds of the investment will be used to grow the team, as well as onboard more suppliers across multiple verticals as the company continues its growth in the UK and then expands to the US later this year.