Ontik Raises $3.7 Million to Expand Digital Trade Credit Platform

Ontik has raised $3.7 million in a seed round to expand its digital trade credit platform that helps B2B wholesalers request, track and collect payments from their trade accounts.

“We’re building tools that take the pain out of payments, collections and credit — for the businesses that keep the world turning, but are still buried in spreadsheets, phone calls and manual graft,” Ontik Co-founder Christoper Smith said in a Tuesday (May 20) post on LinkedIn.

The Ontik platform includes a live aged debtor dashboard that enables businesses to track trade accounts and see their aged debt, credit usage and payment status; a “request to pay” feature that sends branded payment links by SMS, WhatApp and email in one click; and enterprise resource planning (ERP) integrations that enable users to plug Ontik into their existing systems, according to the company’s website.

Through the branded link sent by the user, trade accounts can check live statements, download invoices, track credit, ask questions and pay partially or in full, using a variety of payment methods, per the release.

One of Ontik’s investors, PT1, said in a Tuesday post on Linked that with this seed round and the availability of the platform, “Trade merchants still juggling notepads, overdue invoices and razor-thin margins just got a serious upgrade.”

“Early customers report a 60% reduction in time spent chasing payments, cash collected 30% faster and card fees cut by more than 25%,” PT1 said in its post. “These savings translate directly into margin relief for merchants operating on thin spreads.”

Several digital startups have set their sights on impacting trade finance, PYMNTS reported in October. They aim to solve the problem of receivables that should be spun into real cash traveling up and down supply chain threads into suppliers’ coffers but often become late payments that cause a ripple effect throughout the supply chain.

When Nuvo announced in April 2024 that it added business credit reports and business principal credit reports from Equifax to its trade credit management platform for B2B sellers, Nuvo Co-founder and CEO Sid Malladi said in a press release that this move would “help Nuvo in our mission to support finance teams turn credit into a competitive advantage and fuel their company’s growth.”