MarketInvoice’s fintech partnership with Barclays: Status Update
This January 2019 we first announced our £26m Series B fundraise to scale MarketInvoice, and simultaneously launched a first-of-its-kind fintech-bank partnership with Barclays UK. Our teams have been busy forging ground with the bank, and now, eight months on, I wanted to reflect on how far we’ve come and how much further we’ll go in the future.
Over the past 6 months we’ve expanded the coverage of our partnership at a national level. In doing this, the team and I have been out on the road, meeting 1,300 Barclays business relationship managers in more than 80 towns and cities across the UK, from Aberdeen to Truro. Through training and embedding sessions to pilot and customer review meetings, the partnership has seen our teams come together at more than 250 meet-ups. We’ve also been showcasing the partnership externally at over 50 events to entrepreneurs across the country in co-working hotspots, over Facebook Live and even at Norwich City Football Club! Everyone at MarketInvoice has been working shoulder-to-shoulder with Barclays to spread the word about how, together, we can support their 1 million business banking customers.
In all these meetings and sessions with Barclays staff, we’ve learned about their customers, who span a wide spectrum of regional industry clusters, each with their own unique funding needs. And yet, one thing that’s clear to me in every conversation I have with the Barclays teams is that they, and we, are all working towards a single common goal: to help UK businesses succeed so they can deliver more products and services and build the world we all want to live in.
As an entrepreneur, so many people say no to you that when somebody finally says yes, especially around funding, you’ll always remember them. That’s what this partnership is all about; working together with Barclays to say yes more often to UK businesses who need finance. Their customers now have direct access to the fastest and most innovative sources of funding, an option that no other UK bank is currently able to offer.
Over 780 Barclays Relationship Managers have already referred thousands of customers to speak with us about finance options. It’s been great to see the excitement from Barclays colleagues who have helped a customer they may not have been able to support before partnering with MarketInvoice. I’ve also heard from relationship managers whose customers have switched from their main bank to Barclays following the great experience they’ve had in setting up an invoice finance facility.
Barclays is now also deploying their funding directly onto the MarketInvoice platform. This is a huge milestone for fintech-bank collaboration and to get to this point, our respective risk, legal, data and technology teams worked together over many months.
In partnering, we’re able to join forces in a variety of areas to support UK businesses as they grow and scale. We’re currently working side-by-side with Barclays on their #FrontFoot campaign for example, in which we’ll visit 25,000 small businesses across the UK in a single day to help support them through Brexit. We also plan to join them on the frontline at a series of Barclays Brexit clinics, run cash flow workshops in local Barclays branches and work alongside their incubators at Rise and Eagle Labs to help business owners think more strategically about cash flow.
MarketInvoice and Barclays are building a partnership for the long-term and we’ll be here, together, for businesses through the coming years — with or without Brexit. There’s no denying that these are uncertain times but whatever happens, we will not lose focus of the mission that unites us: to empower businesses with innovative forms of finance that enable them to grow and achieve their most ambitious aspirations. There’s a bright future ahead for fintech-bank collaboration, this is only the beginning.
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
