A year in the life of B2B payments: Looking back on 2022

2022 was a big year at Balance. From securing new partnerships to raising our series B funding, we've made huge strides in helping businesses streamline their online payments and advance their ecommerce channels.

In this post, we’ll highlight some of the initiatives we've been most proud of and give our customers and partners a glimpse of what it means for where the digital commerce front is headed.

Balance Raises $56M Series B

In July, we raised $56 million in a series B round. This funding was a significant milestone for us, allowing us to continue to scale our payment infrastructure, build more integrations, and expand our credit product and payment capabilities to better serve more merchants and marketplaces. 

This round was led by Forerunner, with additional support from amazing partners like Salesforce, HubSpot, Lyra Ventures, Gramercy Ventures, and a group of B2B ecommerce leaders. Their backing will help us create a product that meets the needs of the industry and keeps pace with the evolution of the commerce sector.

We couldn’t be more grateful for the support of our investors and customers who recognize the value of driving digitization forward in the B2B trade industry to reduce costs, improve inefficiencies, and unlock growth.

Their trust and enthusiasm for our vision keeps us motivated to continue innovating towards solutions that take the pain out of B2B payments. 

Securing a $350M credit facility

Unlike in the consumer world where credit cards and PayPal are sufficient, businesses depend on trade credit and B2B financing. In fact, according to Applico, over 50% of the largest B2B marketplaces have or plan to adopt a B2B financing solution.

This is unsurprising, as cash flow is one of the biggest pain points for B2B sellers.

It’s clear that in 2022, B2B financing options will not only become the norm, but rise to be a key differentiator in B2B commerce channels.

Anticipating this, Balance raised a $350 million credit facility in November to provide our customers and their buyers with the working capital they need to succeed. Merchants who are able to strengthen their financing value proposition can better differentiate them from their competitors and bolster their brand. At the same, they can provide buyers with the payment flexibility they need, without the negative cash flow impact.

Delivering built-in B2B payments for the ecommerce ecosystem

At Balance, we understand that for businesses to successfully undergo digital transformation, technology needs to be easy and simple to adopt. If the process is too complicated or time-consuming, it can be seen as a barrier to change and growth. That's why we've been working hard over the past year to make it as easy as possible for merchants to embed B2B financing and payments directly within their systems and ecommerce sites. 

To streamline the development process, we offer multiple options for merchants including flexible and simple APIs and pre-built integrations. For example, merchants using our ecommerce integrations can implement financing for their customers in just a few hours.

Overall, we have been able to decrease implementation time by 60% for all of our customers, on average, over the past year.

Having a faster implementation process is vital for success in the competitive world of B2B ecommerce. It allows merchants to get their product to market more quickly than if they were to build a custom solution.

This is especially important in the increasingly competitive world of digital commerce, where every advantage counts. Looking ahead, our mission continues to offload the burden of bringing B2B payments online by providing easy-to-use tools and solutions.

Scaling product infrastructure to meet demand

As the need for bringing a much simpler way for businesses to make and accept payments has continued to grow, Balance has seen a rising demand for our solution in the market. In 2022, we saw a 123% increase in our customer base and a 60x increase in total volume processed on our platform.

To further support and grow our products and services, we invested in expanding our customer success, credit, product, and integrations teams. This effort paid off for our customers, such as Pittsburgh Spray, an industrial equipment supplier on Shopify Plus.

In just four months of working with us, they were able to finance over 400K in transactions and saw a 30% increase in average order value for financed transactions. 

Looking ahead

At Balance, we are honored to be a part of the incredible changes and growth happening in this space and we can’t wait to continue playing our role in the evolution and transformation of the next digital front for businesses.

What will it take? Nothing short of continuing to optimize the B2B online transaction from beginning to end—from rolling out faster payment methods, to extending instant lines of credit and automating the invoicing process and collections.

We’re investing everyday in making each one of these things an easy reality for all B2B merchants in 2023 and beyond.