from Edison Partners, an investment firm, to help speed its growth. While that\u2019s the first and only fundraising event for the company so far, Payra has ambitions to transform payments in the construction industry.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nThe startup\u2019s services aim to assist construction and building materials suppliers in accepting digital payments like cards and ACH, and to automate the reconciliation inside their legacy finance systems that often lack API (application programming interface) connections.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nVia artificial intelligence-enabled technology, a payment \u201cis actually now incorporated into my system of record, like the pacemaker of my business, and that largely, not to use too much hyperbole, wasn\u2019t really possible before,\u201d co-founder Thomas Cecil said last week in an interview.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u201cThe magic for [companies] is that they\u2019ve been basically told for the last 20 years, \u2018Hey, you can accept credit cards, but you\u2019re going to have to just figure out what that ties to,\u2019\u201d Cecil said.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nMultiple companies provide accounts receivable automation products, such as BillTrust, Growfin and Versapay.\u00a0Payra says its solution integrates with nearly every legacy ERP platform, even those nearly 30 years old, without requiring contractors to make large investments to replace their existing systems.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u201cThe vast, vast, vast majority of these businesses, they\u2019re on ERP systems the general public probably hasn’t heard of, so the challenge is working with what they have in place versus pitching them a rip-and-replace strategy,\u201d Cecil said.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nThe company \u2013 founded two years ago in Nashville, Tennessee \u2013 focuses on larger general contractors, such as commercial concrete, lumber, heating, ventilation and air conditioning and electrical trades.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nThe 14-employee company relies primarily on direct sales for growth and the Edison investment will aid expansion, Cecil said. The Edison investment was Payra\u2019s first outside capital after being “bootstrapped” by the founders, co-founder and CEO Riley Lovingood said during the interview.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u201cThe biggest piece is alleviating a lot of the friction and making a general contractor have to go through hoops to pay somebody,\u201d Lovingood said. \u201cWe\u2019re providing more access to make it easier for them to pay \u2026 straight from the invoice on their phone, on their computer, right there.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nThese companies generally operate with legacy ERP systems and not retail-oriented software, such as Intuit\u2019s QuickBooks, Lovingood and Cecil said in the interview. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nLovingood is a former staffer for U.S. Senator Bill Hagerty, a Tennessee Republican. Cecil, a serial technology entrepreneur, is Payra\u2019s head of product.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nMost companies in the space have no means of capturing payments or data from their paid receivables and integrating it with their finance functions, even if they can send invoices with electronic payment links, Cecil said.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nMany of these firms still navigate paper invoices, paper checks and spreadsheets to manage their receivables, said Lovingood.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nPayra makes money from a percentage of its transactions, the co-founders said. Payra\u2019s credit card payments average $3,500, but \u201cit was not weird for us to see credit card transactions north of $400,000,\u201d Lovingood said.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\nPayra targets companies that are dominant in their region but still fragmented as their industries haven\u2019t consolidated heavily, Lovingood said, noting as an example the 12,000-company U.S. ready-mix concrete industry.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u201cThey each dominate a circular radius between where the plants are because it\u2019s a perishable product, you can\u2019t ship concrete,\u201d he said. \u201cIt’s very fragmented or balkanized. Everybody sort of has their own territory.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nPayra considered using Stripe or PayPal Holdings\u2019 Braintree enterprise payment solution within its business, but found them unworkable for its needs, Cecil said. \u201cYou can\u2019t do that in this business because the tickets are so large that the risk controls of those modern processors will pend the payment or block the payment,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n[ad_2]
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