B2B eCommerce platform Balance announced Wednesday a $25 million raise in Series A funding led by Ribbit Capital. According to data from Crunchbase, this brings Balance’s total funding to $30.5 million since its August, 2020 launch.
Participating investors in the latest round included Avid Ventures as well as existing investors Lightspeed Ventures, Stripe, Y Combinator Continuity Fund, SciFi VC and UpWest. Other individual investors participating include Jaqueline Reses (formerly Head of Square Capital) as well as additional early employees and executives from Square, Plaid, Coinbase, Stripe, and PayPal.
Balance’s platform describes itself as a “consumer-grade experience for business buyers.” Taking a page out of the retail eCommerce handbook, Balance offers digital checkouts and payment methods, as well as automated reconciliation and receivables management, automated vendor payouts and vendor onboarding.
“Global B2B trade being done mostly offline is resulting in high cost of living and economic inefficiencies, worldwide. We are at the very early innings of a massive shift from offline to online, across industries.,” says Bar Geron, Balance founder & CEO. “Our goal is to facilitate this transition with an amazing transaction experience for businesses and suppliers, making it a no-brainer for every B2B business to start selling online.”
However, other B2B eCommerce platforms are in and existence and operating. Shopify Plus, Shopify‘s white glove eCommerce solution for big brands, launched in 2014 and has already scooped up smaller commerce platforms like Handshake in 2019.
While various options exist like Pepperi, OpenCart and OroCommerce, a recent study revealed there may be enough customer base to go around. Sales on B2B eCommerce sites grew by 10% to $1.39 trillion in 2021 from $1.26 trillion in 2019. Combined with e-procurement sales, B2B ecommerce sales in 2020 increased by 11.8% to $2.19 trillion.
According to the release, Balance is already partnering with eCommerce giants like BigCommerce (powering its B2B edition to enable merchants to build their self serve checkout), as well as Magento, leading B2B eCommerce agencies, and soon to include Salesforce.
“There’s $130T of global B2B trade that’s inevitably coming online”, adds Jordan Angelos, GP at Ribbit Capital. “Balance’s checkout and payments infrastructure gives ecommerce businesses a purpose-built toolkit to facilitate this transition. We’re energized by Balance’s mission and excited to become partners.”