Local fintech startup Quartix recently closed a $20 million funding round to kick off the new year.
"This is a huge milestone for us and will allow us to further accelerate our growth," said co-founder Noam Mani. "It will unlock an ability for us to offer more innovative products to more and more buyers and vendors."
Quartix, co-founded in 2017 by Mani and Dror Polak, is a solutions-based mobile platform that allows industrial buyers to pay vendor invoices later and optimize cash by combining technology and institutional capital. Mani and Polak founded the company in Israel and moved its headquarters to Charlotte that year after it was chosen to participate in the QC Fintech accelerator.
"The goal is to democratize supply-chain finance, to level the playing field and unlock advanced digital products (for middle-market companies) that are usually exclusively available to Fortune 500 companies," Mani said.
Mani said the new funds will allow the startup to keep up with post-Covid demand from middle-market industrial companies using its digital, real-time trade-finance products. The round was led by Pittsburgh-based Capital Foundry.
"We'll inject this smart liquidity into our clients' supply chains," he said. "With this, our clients and their vendors will be able to overcome cash flow gaps, strengthen their buyer/vendor relations, avoid supply-chain disruptions and more."
Quartix's platform offers three credit products:
- Supply Chain Finance: Allows vendors to accelerate payments through the platform, which this makes it easier for buyers to negotiate extended payment terms with its vendors.
- Pay Beyond Terms: Allows the buyer to fund timely payments to its vendors, so the vendors get paid on time, and the buyer pays Quartix weeks or months following formal payment terms with its vendors.
- Buy Now, Pay Later: The corporate version of what consumers are offered when they shop at large chains. Quartix pays cash to the vendor so the buyer can get the goods and services it needs. The buyer pays Quartix later.
Mani said hundreds of middle-market vendors and buyers from across the United States and Canada are using the platform. He said continued growth is the company's top priority as it heads into the new year.
"We're at a stage where we're really starting to gain very positive momentum," he said. "Part of it is, our solution is a good fit for the Covid economy ... We're seeing it in the influx of new buyers, new vendors and the overall growth we're experiencing right now."
