Trade buyer comes in for VC-backed Australian fintech player
Greensill, a UK-based enterprise financier with a global operations base, has acquired Australian VC-backed financial technology company Earnd.
Earnd raised A$2.5 million ($1.7 million) last year in a seed round led by NAB Ventures, the VC unit of National Australia Bank. Financial details of the latest transaction have not been disclosed.
Earnd offers an app that allows employees to access their pay as soon as they finish a day’s work at no cost, rather than waiting for regular paydays. The service aims to relieve financial strains related to the wait between paychecks. Greensill describes the wait to be paid during a standard pay cycle as costing workers billions of dollars a year in interest and loan fees, effectively providing employers with free credit.
The start-up has attracted 20 corporate clients since inception in 2018 and is said to be used by more than 10,000 employees. It will continue to be led by CEO and co-founder Josh Vernon and will become the international brand for Greensill’s instant wages app. Greensill, which currently offers a similar service for B2B supply chain payments, plans to extend the offering to individual workers as part of a regional build-out.
“We are attracted to like-minded companies with innovative technology and local expertise,” Greensill’s founder and CEO Lex Greensill said in a release. “In Earnd we have identified an outstanding young team led by an exceptional founder with proven technology. This acquisition will give us a springboard into Australia and the Asia Pacific region, allowing us to offer even more employees the opportunity to get paid sooner.”
Greensill’s core business is financing supply chains by acquiring invoices from its client’s suppliers and repackaging them into short-dated bonds that are sold to investors. The business received an $800 million investment from SoftBank Vision Fund last year that delivered the investor a 15-20% stake according to The Financial Times. It followed up with a separate $655 million investment three months later, AVCJ Research's records show.
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