Ex-Revolut lead raises $15m to clean up business payments with Apron

Former Revolut product lead and Square operations lead Bogdan Uzbekov has just secured $15m in funding for his fintech revolutionising payments for small businesses, Apron.

CEO Uzbekov founded the platform, which capitalises on open banking to cut the time SMEs spend processing invoices, back in 2021 after noticing the unaddressed problem of business payments and the gap between consumer and merchant offerings while working at CashApp.

The fintech soft launched just six months ago and says it is already processing millions of pounds of transactions monthly, working with hundreds of client companies. 

With businesses spending on average five hours a week paying suppliers, working through invoices, waiting for approvals and maintaining their books, Arpon says it cuts the payments process down from hours to minutes.

“What providers forget is that the people behind businesses are, well, people — and they want the same quality they’re familiar with in their consumer apps” Bogdan Uzbekov said.

“Apron puts itself in the position of all these users — accountants, business owners and suppliers — and instead of trying to solve business payments from just one perspective, we create a town square where they can all come together to move money as smoothly as possible.”

Integrating into existing workflows, and compatible with all banks in the UK — though it requires bank transfers rather than open banking for 17 banks including Tide, Metro Bank and Triodos — Apron connects to software that businesses are already using.

Through the platform, users can manage their invoices, bulk pay their suppliers across more than 150 countries and 30 currencies, make payments and approvals side-by-side, and automatically reconcile payments through their accounting software.

Uzbekov described Apron as “a critical cog in the business machine that keeps small businesses moving forward”.

“We want to flip payments from being a blocker to being a booster: something that can be done quickly, securely and even give you a sense of joy and satisfaction,” he added.

The Series A funding round was led by Index Ventures, with participation from Visionaries Club and Bessemer Venture Partners, which led the startup’s Seed funding round of $5.5m earlier this year.

Apron plans to use the funds to expand its 20-person team, which currently includes former Meta, Revolut and Square employees.

“The needs of SMBs have been ignored for too long. Bogdan’s team has realised that if you build an amazing product, it will spread organically and at speed among small businesses and accountants,” Index partner Jan Hammer, who joins Apron’s board, said. 

“Apron has not just built a technically exceptional back-end payments platform —  combined with their unique focus on the product experience for end-users, they have the potential to redefine how people pay invoices everywhere.”

The fundraise comes alongside the launch of two new products — a ‘Hub’ for larger accounting practices that has just launched, creating a centralised space for team members and tasks, and ‘Snap’, which will launch early next year and allow accountants to automatically capture and categorise client invoices.