Online lender BlueVine raises $49m to expand team and offerings
Online lender BlueVine has raised $49 million in Series D funding from its existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures, 83North, Citi Ventures, Rakuten FinTech Fund, and Silicon Valley Bank. The funding will be used to grow the company's team and offerings.
The latest round of funding brings the total amount raised by BlueVine to more than $110 million.
Founded in 2013 by Eyal Lifshitz, BlueVine started out in an obscure area of finance called invoice factoring, where businesses sell their accounts receivable to creditors at a discounted value so they have access to working capital. The lender makes money off the difference between the discount and the actual value of the invoice, which is paid in seven to 90 days.
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BlueVine is now increasing its maximum credit line from $250,000 to $2 million.
The other, more straightforward aspect of BlueVine is it provides direct loans to small businesses via a service called Flex Credit. The company offers lines of credit between $5,000 and $100,000 with clear fees and pricing.
Since launching in March 2014, the Palo Alto, California-based company has provided more than $200 million in financing to small businesses and is expecting this number to reach $500 million by the close of 2017.
In October, Intuit announced that it is adding BlueVine's Flex Credit to the QuickBooks financing platform.
"BlueVine's business line of credit has proven to be very popular with QuickBooks users," said Rania Succar, business leader of QuickBooks Financing. "It fills a critical part of the QuickBooks Financing portfolio and allows us to extend credit to younger businesses."