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A startup that uses technology to stop employees from abusing company expenses has just raised €8 million ($8.6 million) from investors, despite a slump in investment in the fintech industry.
CleverCards is a Dublin-based company that uses a digital platform linked to programmable fee cards to give companies control over how employees use company payment cards.
according to a 2016 Global Survey During an investigation by the chief financial officer of human resources firm Robert Half, employees made several improper expense reporting requests, including a doggy day spa, taxidermy services, dance lessons, a beef serving and even a welder.
The requests, while strange, reflect a harsh reality many companies face when it comes to corporate spending: Sometimes they can’t trust their employees’ judgment.
CleverCards CEO Kealan Lennon said his platform aims to solve this problem.
Rather than giving employees a corporate credit card that they can go out and use to make purchases anywhere in the world, CleverCards allows businesses to offer prepaid cards that can be configured to be used only by certain employees and block certain transactions if they are considered improper.
“Businesses want to make sure that the right employees have access to the card and that the card is only used for a specific purpose,” Lennon told CNBC.
“It’s financial control,” he added. “The idea of a configurable payments platform has never been implemented before. By doing it digitally, customers can say, I want to be able to do this with the push of a button.”
CleverCards has raised new funding in a round led by strategic investor Pluxee, the company revealed exclusively to CNBC on Friday. This new investment brings the total funding CleverCards has raised to date to more than €28 million.
Pluxee is an employee coupons and benefits platform that was spun out of French food and catering company Sodexo earlier this year.
Listed on Euronext in France with a valuation of 4 billion euros.
Take over the business of Adyen and Stripe
CleverCards was founded in 2019 and has signed up more than 10,000 businesses as customers. eBay, PaddyPower, Betfair, Accenture, Microsoft and Apple are among the company’s clients.
In addition to these operations, CleverCard also partners with public sector organizations.
In 2022, CleverCards is working with the UK government to help deliver social welfare payments to people with smart meters who would normally pay their bills via direct debit but have been forced to seek additional financial help due to rising fuel prices. These cards can only be used to pay bills on specific utility company websites.
Lennon said CleverCards uses artificial intelligence to perform identity verification checks on recipients, helping to avoid fraud.
Lennon said CleverCards’ funding round stands out in a cutthroat market for fintech deals and funding.
“It’s a tough environment,” he said. “The pace of capital raising is pretty impressive in the current market gridlock because no one is raising capital.”
He said CleverCards is increasingly taking business from payment technology giants Adyen and Stripe.
“As a smaller company, it’s been pretty remarkable that we’ve been looking at Stripes and Adyens and moving forward,” he said, adding, “Now, we’ve won business competing against them.”
CleverCards said it will use the new capital to expand its business, scale its products and explore a wider range of opportunities.
In addition to fundraising, CleverCards has appointed five new non-executive directors with extensive experience in payments technology to its board.
They include industry veterans Patrick Waldron, Donal Daly, Marc Frappier, Garry Lyons and Viktoria Otero del Val.
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