Melio raising hundreds of millions of dollars at $4 billion valuation

Israeli fintech company Melio is raising hundreds of millions of dollars at a $4 billion valuation, website The Information is reporting. Melio completed a $110 million financing round at a valuation of $1.3 billion in January of this year. Since its launch a little over three years ago, the company has raised a total of $256 million.

Melio, which developed a simple technological solution enabling small businesses in the U.S. to digitally transfer payments to their suppliers, has benefitted from perfect timing and a measure of luck. Its solution helped small businesses overcome the payment transfer challenges brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic and in fact provided a business lifeline to many of them.

According to The Information, the new financing is being co-led by New York-based investment firm Thrive Capital and existing backer General Catalyst.

Its recent financing round was led by Coatue Management, which had invested in Melio before as well as in a number of other prominent Israeli companies such as Rapyd and Gong. Investors from previous rounds include Accel, Aleph, Bessemer Venture Partners, Corner Ventures, General Catalyst, Latitude, LocalGlobe, Salesforce, and American Express Ventures. 

The company launched its product in May 2019 and has already processed billions of dollars in payments. It carries out a majority of the transfers for free, with its business model relying on charging a commission for premium services that help clients manage their cash flow.

The company was founded in 2018 by Matan Bar, Ilan Atias, and Ziv Paz. Bar is a serial fintech entrepreneur who sold his first startup, The Gifts Project, to eBay and ran a team of 100 people at PayPal Holdings Inc. that was responsible for P2P payments. Paz was a VP at the FIMI fund that specializes in mainly industrial mergers and acquisitions. Atias had previously worked at PrimeSense, which developed body motion sensors and was sold to Apple. Afterward, he went on to management positions at Outbrain and Windward.