Eric Glyman and Karim Atiyeh. Image: Ramp
Payments giant Stripe has returned to back the fintech start-up that offers corporate cards and expense management software.
Stripe is continuing its fintech investing streak by backing corporate card start-up Ramp once again, as part of a funding round that values the company at $1.6bn.
The New York-based start-up has raised $115m with D1 Capital Partners co-leading the round. Stripe was a previous backer.
Ramp builds expense management software for businesses that accompanies its corporate card. It competes with other buzzy fintech start-ups in the corporate card space like Brex.
The start-up was founded in 2019 by Eric Glyman, Karim Atiyeh and Gene Lee, who previously worked at Capital One after selling their last start-up, Paribus, to the financial institution.
“Our time at Capital One opened our eyes to the innovation barriers that exist in the corporate card industry and sparked a new idea inspired by our desire to put customers first,” said Glyman, who is CEO of Ramp. “With our new start-up, we would build software that was aligned with – and protective of – businesses.”
According to the company, it helps businesses identify wasteful spending and is creating a more transparent system for corporate card payments. It has more than 1,000 customers and generates revenue from the interchange fees on its cards that are issued through Visa’s network.
“We have spent the last two years focused on building the best possible product for our customers and have designed an incredible user experience and capabilities not found in any other corporate card or spend management platform,” Glyman added.
“During our next phase of growth, we plan to expand our efforts to bring the value of Ramp to more businesses in more places and to transform the way more companies do business.”
The start-up raised $150m in debt financing from Goldman Sachs in February.
Stripe funding
This is the latest investment made by Stripe, the payments giants founded by Irish brothers John and Patrick Collison that raised $600m itself recently at a $95bn valuation.
It has taken stakes in several start-ups in the fintech space. Earlier this year it invested in Check and Fast, giving it a bird’s eye view of the market segments that young fintech companies are working on. It also has shares in UK neobank Monzo.
Stripe has also been on the acquisition trail, buying Nigeria’s Paystack late last year to push into Africa.
