U.K. trade collaboration platform Nook has raised $1.1 million (950,000 euros) to broaden its product and engineering team, expand its offerings, and develop sales and marketing activity with small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), according to a Wednesday (Oct. 27) report from EU-Startups. Speedinvest and TriplePoint led Nook’s pre-seed funding round, which also had investments from Ascension, Notion, as well as various angel investors, according to the report.
The company, which was founded this year and is based in London and Lisbon, hopes to harness its platform to streamline how businesses trade together, according to the report. Nook syncs with accounting software and enables payments from customers’ bank accounts, allowing for simple account reconciliation according to the company’s website.
A business email compromise scheme involving payment of a $3 million phony invoice led Nook Co-founder Henry Arnold to start the company, according to PYMNTS. At the time, Arnold had been working for a business that fell victim to the fraudulent invoice. After doing some research, Arnold found that the problem was widespread, costing the U.K. alone about $10 billion, Nook fellow Co-founder Joseph Lines told PYMNTS in July.
Securing B2B payments became the foundation for the creation of Nook. Instead of relying on a PDF for trade documents — which can be difficult to authenticate — Nook employs a secure, closed-loop system that streamlines invoicing, payments and reconciliation and marries accounts payable and accounts receivable.
Read more: B2B Payment Ecosystems Tackle Business Email Compromise
To further strengthen its B2B payments system, Nook in July announced a collaboration with open banking infrastructure firm Yapily. As part of the joint effort, businesses can verify their suppliers and authenticate vendors’ bank accounts, which will help eliminate invoice fraud and secure bulk payments for SMBs, according to PYMNTS. Yapily’s bulk payment tool enables customers to make single and bulk payments in a single invoice-to-payment workflow, which the companies said cuts down on administrative time.
Related: Nook, Yapily Create First Trade Collaboration Platform For SMBs
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NEW PYMNTS DATA: DIGITAL BANKING STUDY – THE BREWING BATTLE FOR WHERE WE WILL BANK
About: Forty-seven percent of U.S. consumers are shying away from digital-only banks due to data security worries, despite significant interest in these services. In Digital Banking: The Brewing Battle For Where We Will Bank, PYMNTS surveyed over 2,200 consumers to reveal how digital-only banks can shore up privacy and security while offering convenient services to satisfy this unmet demand.
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