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Paystand (previously PayStand) is a financial technology company founded in February of 2013 by Jeremy Almond and Scott Campbell with headquarters in Scotts Valley, California. Paystand was founded with a mission to create an open commercial finance system, starting with a zero-fee network for B2B payments, by building a new underlying infrastructure that can support unlimited financial transactions for a fixed monthly cost.

In 2022 Paystand acquired Yaydoo–the leader in accounts payable, cash flow management, and liquidity solutions in Mexico and LATAM–and with this Paystand achieved a Unicorn status.

History
Paystand was born in 2013 from one particular idea: to rebuild the commercial finance system from the ground up. Between 2007 and 2009, CEO and co-founder Jeremy Almond witnessed the worst Great Recession and his parents losing their hard earned home – along with close to 10 million Americans– as a result of this economic downfall. Following these events, Jeremy and his friend Scott Campbell — co-founder and current Head of Solutions & Services — set out to build a better commercial financial system with no fees, no paper, and an open industry. The two friends were inspired by pioneers taking sales and marketing into the cloud to become faster and more efficient.

In 2014, Paystand opened its first offices in Scotts Valley, California and launched its innovative blockchain-based Payments-as-a-Service platform and the Paystand bank network.

In 2016 Paystand announced a collaboration with financial app company ONE UP to help SMEs embrace electronic payments. By adding Paystand’s payments services to its existing small business accounting, inventory, and invoicing solutions, ONE UP’s allowed its more than 335,000 enterprise clients to accept payments online from their corporate customers faster and more affordably. The firms said businesses can add a "Pay Now" button to electronic invoices sent using the ONE UP service. At the time, the solution accepts payment via credit card, electronic checks, and bank transfers.

Paystand launched a blockchain-based payment certification in October that same year. This technology provided a secure and independent means for businesses to confirm that a payment was made and that the transaction information was not tampered with. The application of blockchain in payment certification enhanced the security of trade finance and other B2B payments.

In 2018, Paystand expanded its reach by introducing its PaaS solution to the Canadian Market. As part of its geographic expansion, Paystand had developed an entirely new infrastructure for domestic corporate payments in the country. That same year, the company participated in the Commerce.Innovated accelerator program by Silicon Valley Bank and First Data. .

This same year the company opened a new office in Guadalajara, Mexico.

As the main product continued to develop, the integration into NetSuite’s platform was released in October of 2018. This integration connected directly into the NetSuite enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform using its SuiteApp solution, linking businesses to Paystand's accounts receivable features including invoicing and payment acceptance, collections, summary invoices, and multi-currency support.

Early in 2019, Paystand announced its Automated Receivables tool, designed to automate AR departments’ critical processes, including invoice collections and customizable workflows. Later that year, the company released a new service called Assurety-as-a-Service with application-ready blockchain API . Using the new service, Paystand’s customers were able to create a secure, certified, digitally notarized record trail, developers were able to use Paystand’s hybrid blockchain platform for real-time applications that can verify any event, action or identity. This was the first application-ready API that allows businesses to easily launch and deploy scalable blockchain networks.

In December of 2019, Paystand entered into an initial agreement with JCB Co., Ltd. to provide the first end-to-end digital payment platform for Japanese enterprises and JCB customers. Throughout the year Paystand accelerated its partnerships and product development to back the international need for digital payments, expanding into Mexico, Canada and Asia.

The company continued to grow, opening offices in Minnesota.

By 2020 Paystand’s business was up more than 60% within the previous twelve months, adding 80 new large enterprise customers in a lapse of 2 years. By that time it had over 140,000 businesses transacting across its platform.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, forcing businesses to operate remotely or cease operations, the need for digital transformation grew. This year the company saw an accelerated digital payments adoption–which continued to be an industry trend as the pandemic lockdowns started to diminish.

Early in 2021, Paystand teamed with accounting and business management software company Sage. The collaboration – provided as native integration with Sage Intacct– allowed a peer-to-peer (P2P)-like business payment experience via Paystand’s corporate payments network.

Later, the company released a digital lockbox as result of the shift to remote work, thus introducing a paperless way to handle finances, called Paystand Smart Lockbox. In the same year, Paystand opened new offices in Utah and Hermosillo (Mexico).

In March of 2022, the company released its DeFi Corporate Card (an update to a corporate expense card launched in 2020 ). The corporate card is the first-of-its-kind to offer crypto rewards, it also offers instant provisioning of virtual and physical cards, advanced spend controls, and real-time expense reporting.

Later that year, the company debuted what it called the world’s first dynamic discounting application for seller accounts receivable (AR) teams. The solution is powered by Ethereum smart contracts.

In August 2022, Paystand became a Unicorn after acquiring Yaydoo–the leader in accounts payable, cash flow management, and liquidity solutions in Mexico and LATAM. The deal represents one of the biggest technology unions in Mexico and LATAM and makes commercial blockchain-based solutions more accessible across the Americas.

That same year Paystand opened its latest offices in San Francisco and Austin.

Today, Paystand has 7 locations throughout the US and Mexico and over 600,000 businesses make payments over the Paystand Network.

Funding
Paystand started by raising its Seed Round in 2014, led by Cervin Ventures.

In 2017, Paystand got at $6 M Series A funding led by BlueRun Ventures with participation from Cervin Ventures, Serra Ventures, TiE, and Capital for Founders.

In 2019, Paystand closed a $20 million Series B round of funding, bringing on DNX Ventures, and Battery Ventures, among others, as new investors. At this point, the company had raised $28.3 million since its inception in March 2013.

In 2021, while the business continued to grow to almost triplicating its size year-over-year, the company raised $50 million Series C funding led by NewView Capital, with participation from SoftBank’s SB Opportunity Fund, King River Capital Transform Capital, and Industrious Ventures.

Since its inception, Paystand has raised over $75 million in funding to enable the company to expand its product offerings to include payment and reconciliation automation tools, such as payment processing, automated invoicing, and accounts receivable management.

Products and Services
Paystand offers a blockchain-enabled B2B Payments-as-a-Service platform designed to help businesses streamline their financial operations. The platform includes different technologies that as a whole build a solution that aims to change the current state of commercial finance into a modern, open, and more efficient way to move money between businesses. These technologies include:


 * Paystand bank network. Paystand has built a zero-fee bank network that covers over 90% of the US banking market and 98% of all commercial accounts, enabling businesses to send and receive money over a fast and secure payment network.
 * Smart Lockbox. This feature allows businesses to automatically process, deposit, and reconcile paper check payments and move payers to digital alternatives.
 * Collections Automation. Enables businesses to automate invoice collections with highly customizable workflows. With Receivables Automation, businesses can track all invoices, receivable notes, or other receivables in one dashboard.
 * Payment Processing. The Paystand platform supports multiple payment methods, including ACH transfers, eChecks, and credit cards.
 * Virtual terminal. This technology allows businesses to capture payments over the phone or at the office without requiring additional equipment
 * Fund-on-file Tokens. Paystand uses tokenization to protect all users’ sensitive data by replacing it with an algorithmically generated sequence called a Fund-on-File token. With this, users can securely authorize, charge, and re-use a customer’s payment method without accessing their private information directly.
 * Reconciliation automation. The platform includes tools to help businesses manage their accounts receivable, including automatic payment reconciliation.
 * Payment Analytics. Paystand offers detailed analytics to help businesses understand their payment data and identify areas for improvement.

Paystand’s platform is designed to integrate with various business software, including accounting software, ERP systems, and CRM platforms.

DeFi corporate card
The Paystand DeFi Corporate Card is a business expense card with native crypto rewards. The DeFi Card offers highly desired spend management tools that include :
 * Instant provisioning of virtual and physical cards for their employees and expense line items.
 * Real-time tracking of transactions by class and category.
 * Advanced spend controls, including spend limits, merchant category codes, and auto-lock dates, reducing risk and ensuring that their teams always stay within budget.
 * 1% back in Bitcoin on every purchase.

Awards and Recognition
Paystand has received several awards and recognition for its innovative payment platform. In 2019, the company made it to the CB Insights Fintech 250 list.

Paystand made the 2020, 2021, and 2022 Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing companies with a growth rate of 876%.

The Silicon Valley Business Journal and the Santa Cruz Tech Beat have also recognized the company for its contributions to the fintech industry.