Pennylane, Qonto, Agicap, Pleo and Mollie have one factor in widespread. All of them use Chift in a method or one other to handle integrations with different companies. And this comparatively younger Belgium-based startup simply raised a €2.3 million seed spherical ($2.5 million at at this time’s alternate charge).
Many fintech startups depend on integrations to make their product work with their clients’ monetary stack. They usually find yourself constructing numerous of connectors and accomplice integrations to maintain monetary info constant throughout a number of merchandise. As their integration ecosystem grows, they often depend on an iPaaS supplier (integration platform-as-a-service).
Chift primarily acts as a third-party integration skilled. It really works a bit like Codat within the U.Ok. and Merge within the U.S. As an alternative of constructing connectors one after the other, Chift presents a set of unified APIs which might be appropriate with the most well-liked monetary instruments on the market.
For example, Chift has developed an accounting API that’s appropriate with French accounting software program from Sage, Cegid and Pennylane. The corporate has additionally developed integrations round invoicing instruments, e-commerce platforms and point-of-sales software program.
Chift has determined to concentrate on monetary instruments first. “We’re integrating with instruments that generate monetary knowledge,” co-founder and CEO Gauthier Henroz informed TechCrunch.
Not like different industries, the fintech market continues to be comparatively fragmented — every European nation has its personal accounting or invoicing platforms. However it may be helpful to have the ability to entry monetary knowledge from any SaaS product.
As extra corporations begin counting on Chift, the startup can add extra connectors. All of Chift’s purchasers can profit from these new integrations. As an additional benefit for Chift, it creates a barrier to entry to newcomers.
“In Europe, that’s the place all of the complexity lies. Issues are going to be completely different in each nation, notably for accounting, factors of gross sales and invoicing instruments,” Henroz stated.
“We assist our clients, who then upsell or open up new markets. There’s little or no churn since you’re built-in, you’re related, you join them to others and also you create new alternatives for them,” he added later within the dialog.
Creating an integration isn’t a one-off mission both. Corporations launch updates to their APIs, which might result in failures. Chift is accountable for sustaining these integrations. SaaS corporations can concentrate on their core product as a substitute of these integrations.
Buyers within the seed spherical embody Entourage (Pieterjan Bouten’s fund), Shapers (Philippe Teixeira da Mota’s fund), Seeder Fund and several other enterprise angels. “Our objective is to turn out to be the European chief,” Henroz stated.
