Balance Lands $350M to Help Steady SMBs

B2B marketplace and eCommerce payments platform Balance has received a $350 million credit facility from Viola Credit to boost its financing capabilities.

“Merchants can’t facilitate trust with new buyers without payment terms and buyers won’t move from their current vendor without getting the same terms,” Balance CEO Bar Geron said in a news release Tuesday (Nov. 22).

“In other words, terms are a must-have for merchants to truly grow in the digital space, without limiting their cash flow. Merchants need to know they have trade credit to grow with.”

Launched last year, Balance says it has expanded its customer base 10 times over, working with hundreds of merchants in industries including lumber, chemicals, steel, retail and food. This credit facility follows the $56 million the company raised in a Series B round in July.

As PYMNTS wrote last week, working capital can be elusive for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), as entrepreneurs face daunting risks, and a “reality that makes financing those dreams both a challenge and a catalyst for alternatives.”

PYMNTS’ Karen Webster examined this issue in a conversation that included Tasia Ford and Paul Ford, co-owners of Big Red’s Hot Sauce, and Bernado Martinez, vice president of global merchant lending at PayPal.

“The story for Paul and Tasia is really at the core of why we’re doing what we’re doing at PayPal,” Martinez said. “The reality is that capital access is roughly a $1 trillion dollar problem around the world.”

He said his company is reshaping merchant lending by scoring SMBs on metrics that banks and financial institutions don’t have handy: the flow of sales and payments these SMBs generate from PayPal.

“What we’re doing right now is looking at different types of information that otherwise was not present,” Martinez said. “That’s really the core issue that we have been able to solve, that gap, and being able to provide, to customers like Paul and Tasia, quick access to capital.”

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