BlueVine, a Palo Alto, Calif., firm that is aiming to modernize the invoice-financing business, announced a new fundraising round on Wednesday.
The company said that it has raised equity and debt funding totaling $40 million. It declined to disclose the breakdown between equity and debt.
The equity funding round was led by Menlo Ventures, a venture capital firm in Menlo Park, Calif., according to a press release from BlueVine. The debt funding is being supplied by the $41 billion-asset Silicon Valley Bank in Santa Clara, Calif.
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Online lenders like Aprenita, Payability and Pollen VC have all launched within the last 13 months to fill a need they say is not being met by traditional banks, and only partially by venture capitalists and invoice-financing companies.
January 19 -
More lenders of all types are taking an interest in factoring, or buying a company's receivables, as they fight for commercial clients. But the business is forbidding for new entrants: it's dominated by a handful of large companies, with intense competition from smaller nonbanks, and is closely tied to the volatile retail-sales market.
June 2 -
Ex-banker Sandy Kemper, the chief executive of an online marketplace that allows companies to negotiate over discounted, speedier payments, discusses the future of commercial finance.
June 26
BlueVine, which launched in March 2014, offers credit lines to small businesses that want to receive payment on their invoices on a sped-up timetable – a form of financing known as factoring.
Businesses receive 85% of the invoice amount upfront, plus an additional rebate, the size of which varies based on when the invoice ultimately gets paid, according to BlueVine's website. BlueVine then collects and keeps the amount on the invoice.
In an August interview, Chief Executive Officer Eyal Lifshitz said that BlueVine's cloud-based service is far more streamlined than the process used by many of its older competitors, which require small-business owners to scan or fax documents. At the time, Lifshitz predicted that BlueVine would fund $50 million-$100 million in invoices in 2015.
BlueVine also announced Wednesday that it has increased its maximum credit line from $150,000 to $250,000.
