Veem, a US-based global payments network, has raised $31m in a series D round from a consortium led by Truist Ventures, the corporate venture capital division of Truist Financial, the country’s sixth-largest commercial bank formed in December out of the merger of BB&T and SunTrust.
Other new participants in the round included MUFG Innovation Partners, the corporate venturing unit of MUFG, the largest bank in Japan, as well as AB Ventures, the VC unit of Arab Bank, Paper Excellence, a pulp company owned by Sinar Mas Group, and Myer Family Investments.
Existing investors that participated in this round include: Alphabet’s corporate venturing unit GV (formerly Google Ventures), investment bank Goldman Sachs, VC firms Kleiner Perkins and Trend Forward Capital and banks Silicon Valley Bank and National Australia Bank Ventures.
Vanessa Vreeland, head of Truist Ventures since January after its formation out of BB&T Ventures, said: “Our leadership in Veem’s strategic funding round marks our first investment as Truist Ventures. Veem’s management team is an inspiring group of innovators and visionaries that are solving a critical pain point for small- and medium-sized businesses….
“Their proprietary multi-rail technology enables connections between businesses and their vendors, suppliers and contractors through a service that is easy to use and more cost effective than legacy cross-border B2B [business-to-business] payment options—capabilities that our clients need.”
In October 2018, Veem completed a $25m funding round that included GV, a corporate venturing subsidiary of internet and technology conglomerate Alphabet.
Investment banking firm Goldman Sachs led the round, which included Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), Extol Capital, Trend Forward Capital, Kleiner Perkins and Pantera Capital.
Founded as Align Commerce, Veem has developed a payments platform that helps businesses pay vendors, suppliers or contractors quickly and efficiently regardless of currency.
The company raised $24m in a March 2017 series B round led by financial services firm National Australia Bank’s NAB Ventures unit that it now states was in fact $26m in size.
GV also invested in the series B round, as did SVB, Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers (KPCB) prior to its split last month, and SBI Investment, a venture capital vehicle for financial services provider SBI Group.
KPCB, Pantera and SVB unit SVB Ventures had already backed a $12.5m series A round for Veem in 2015 that also featured Recruit Strategic Partners, part of human resources provider Recruit, Digital Currency Group and FS Venture Capital.
The company had previously raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Pantera, Bitcoin Opportunity, Boost VC, Bayhill Capital Management, Nyca Investment, Pivot Holding, Fenway Summer, R3 and Whittemore Collection in 2014.
This investment will go towards the development of a channel partner program that will widen Veem’s geographic footprint. With more than 225,000 customers and counting, sending and receiving money in more than 100 countries, Veem’s technology combines traditional systems with the blockchain technology and digital wallets.
Financial Technology Partners served as exclusive financial and strategic adviser to Veem on the transaction.
