MarketInvoice has secured a £6m ($10m) investment as it looks to extend its product range to make the firm a one-stop destination for working capital finance.
The peer-to-peer finance provider will use the funds to broaden its product set including allowing businesses to access funds against licences, contracts, and subscriptions, as well as supplier finance where businesses can get finance to pay suppliers to complete large projects.
Following the Chancellor’s confirmation of an ‘Innovative Finance ISA’ which will allow tax free investing in peer-to-peer finance from April 2016, MarketInvoice is also planning to use the new funds to enable retail investors to access the MarketInvoice platform and gain exposure to this attractive risk-return asset class.
Northzone and Paul Forster, co-founder and former CEO of Indeed.com, are backing the investment.
Jeppe Zink, general partner at Northzone, said: “We’ve been working with MarketInvoice for nine months and are really excited by what the team is achieving. We’re seeing great metrics around user growth and engagement.
“This is a classic example of a tech business disrupting an age-old industry and having a fantastic real world impact on its users based on a fundamentally better service. The opportunity for growth is massive.”
And Forster added: “MarketInvoice has one of the most robust models in peer-to-peer finance and is growing its user base quickly. They have great plans to broaden their core products on both the borrowing and lending sides of the platform. There’s a lot of innovation yet to come and I’m excited to be part of it.”
So far £475m has been traded across the platform since launch in 2011, with £30m per month currently being raised. Finance is available from as little as £1,000 to £5m and up.
Northzone is a technology investment fund. The partnership has to date raised seven funds and invested in some 100 technology-enabled companies. The current portfolio includes companies such as Spotify, Avito.ru, Trustpilot, WideSpace and SpaceApe. The company has offices in London, Stockholm, Oslo, Copenhagen and New York.
Forster co-founded Indeed.com in 2004 and led the company as CEO through rapid growth to a successful exit. Indeed is a giant of the online job search market and was acquired in 2012 by Recruit Co – one of the world’s largest HR services companies. Under his stewardship Indeed.com grew from startup to market leader, with over 1,000 employees and 180 million monthly unique users today.