Amex Ventures, PayPal Ventures Invest In SMB Data Firm Codat

American Express Ventures and PayPal Ventures have made “strategic investments” in business data FinTech startup Codat, which has also officially rolled out its U.S. operations, according to a Tuesday (March 2) announcement.

“We’re excited to welcome American Express Ventures and PayPal Ventures as investors to further our mission to make life easier for small businesses,” Codat Founder and CEO Peter Lord said in the announcement. “It’s clear that small businesses are the backbone of global economies, and in the next few years, we believe there will be a dramatic acceleration in the quality of financial products they are offered.”

Codat describes itself as FinTech upstart fueling the small- to medium-sized business (SMB) “data ecosystem.” The company’s application programming interface (API) links the technologies and offerings required by SMBs for their work. It also handles most of the work with integrations, which lets providers concentrate on bolstering their services for SMBs, according to the announcement.

Codat was established in 2017 in the United Kingdom to help SMBs by offering an information exchange linking SMBs with the financial institutions (FIs) and FinTechs that service them, the announcement stated. Some of the clients working with Codat, which has offices in New York and London, include insurers and lenders in addition to those working in corporate cards, point of sale (POS) software and payments, among other areas.

The news comes as Virgin Money has brought Codat onto its list of partners, PYMNTS reported in February. At the time, it was noted that Codat’s technology will have an important role in allowing for the communication of information among Virgin Money and its business bank clients.

In November, Codat announced that it was working with Visa to provide more in-depth data on SMBs for European banks. At the time, it was noted that Visa will help Codat in growing its API to help business information flow better between FinTechs, SMBs and other firms in need.