Big problem for small and medium businesses
Small businesses are the backbone of the economy. They account for a big proportion of employment and taxes generated. There are 5.5 million SMEs in the UK alone. These businesses are not easy to reach, they are very different, and there is a very large tail in this population. However most of them have a few things in common – they have customers who they charge for goods & services; they have employees who they pay wages on a regular basis and they have suppliers who they need to pay. These operations, also known as accounts receivable / accounts payable, have for SMEs historically been underserved. There exists a huge amount of friction for SMEs to collect and to pay invoices.
Crezco was built to help businesses to solve this problem. While it may be true that SMEs are well served for e-commerce and point-of-sale payments with companies such as Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, Stripe, etc. – tools to facilitate invoice payments have remained poor and disparate. Crezco was designed to simplify any kind of invoice payment: domestic and international, bulk payments (paying all outstanding invoices in one click), recurring payments (collecting rents or subscriptions), instant payments (via generated links to get paid right away) and much more.
One of the root causes for such inefficiency in the space is that existing tools tend to be poorly embedded into the existing tech stack for a business user. As a business, you typically work with at least 2 different platforms – the accounting platform, where invoices need to be recorded for bookkeeping purposes and your business banking platform. Bringing accounting and banking together is where Crezco excels by being hyper focused on the user-experience and understanding where the real pain points lie. By integrating with ERPs and accounting systems, users can perform all invoice payments in one place. Crezco is built on open banking rails, which allows them to connect to end users’ bank accounts in the process. Integrations with core infrastructure providers is what makes “Pay by Crezco” payment experience so seamless. Crezco effectively bridges the gap between accounting and banking environments. Customers also benefit from lower transaction fees due to open banking connectivity
Early traction
In January 2021, Xero accepted Crezco as a Payments Service Provider for accounts receivable alongside Stripe and GoCardless. In September 2023, Crezco was chosen by Xero to become their bill payments solution and to replace previously used Wise. 50% of every new business registered in the UK opens an account with Xero. By embedding payments into platforms like Xero, Crezco saves SMEs significant amounts of time and resources, while also eliminates scope for human errors. Crezco is at the beginning of its partnership with Xero, focusing on domestic payments for now and with a clear roadmap to launch international payments in the next phase. Other partners will also follow.
Crezco has processed over £200 million in domestic and international payment volume. They can already support 37 currencies across 170 countries for FX payments
From the first call that we had with Ralph Rogge, the founder and CEO of Crezco, it was clear to us that he was a fighter with a winner’s mentality. He knows acutely well that “competition is not standing still”, as he likes to remind us regularly. And he is only just starting.
Since inception, Crezco has processed over £200 million in domestic and international payment volume. They can already support 37 currencies across 170 countries for FX payments. All of this is from less than 10,000 customers, which is a tiny percentage of the total addressable market.
We are fully behind Ralph and his team and look forward to supporting Crezco at the next phase of their journey. If you want to join him and the team on that mission check out Crezco’s careers page here.
