rewrite this title Flex Raises $70 Million to Improve Payments for High Net Worth Business Owners – Finovate

Business banking platform Flex raised $70 million in a Series B1 round to expand its business finance, payments, private credit, and ERP offerings while doubling its workforce.

The company also launched Flex Global, a cross-border banking service that combines multi-currency accounts, global payments, and stablecoin infrastructure to enable faster international money movement.

With Flex Global, Flex is positioning itself to compete more directly with Brex and Ramp by offering globally active businesses a unified platform that blends banking, payments, credit, and wealth management.

The business banking space is heating up again. Business banking platform Flex landed $70 million in a Series B1 investment, boosting its total equity funding to $180 million and total debt funding to $300 million.

Halo Fund lead the investment, which comes seven months after Flex’s $60 million Series B round. Portage Ventures, Wellington, Crosslink Capital, 53 Stations, Titanium Ventures, Spice, Florida Funders, Spice, and others also contributed. Halo’s participation is especially notable, as its co-founders span the sports and entertainment space, bringing expertise in sports and entertainment distribution into audiences that include millions of successful middle-market business owners and entrepreneurs.

With this round, Flex plans to expand across business finance, personal finance, payments, private credit, and ERP. The company will also use the funds to double the team size from 110 employees to more than 200 by year-end.

Flex made its debut in 2022 to bring private banking to high net worth business owners. The California-based company offers banking, private credit, payments, billing, and accounting tools for businesses, as well as a business credit card that pays up to 5% cashback. The company’s average customer uses four or more of these products on its platform. Flex has crossed $10 billion in annualized total payment volume and is currently growing 4x year-over-year.

“I’ve spent my career helping entrepreneurs win, and they all have the same problem: their business and personal financial lives are completely intertwined, but every bank treats them as two different customers, missing what they’re actually trying to build,” said Halo Fund Owner Co-founder Ryan Smith. “Flex is the first team creating a real private bank around the owner and the entire household’s finances, and the gap they’re filling is just as real globally as it is in the US. Zaid and the team have built an enduring business that is becoming an institution for the world’s most ambitious owners.”

Along with today’s funding announcement, Flex is launching Flex Global, a service that brings together local currency accounts, cross-border payments, and stablecoins for always-on, fast funds transfers. The service is aimed to serve cross-border businesses by issuing global credit cards, leveraging stablecoin payment rails and wallets in 100+ countries, and offering institutional USD accounts for foreign business owners. Flex’s multi-currency accounts support 32 currencies across 76 countries, enabling busineses to hold, send, and receive funds in the currencies they actually operate in.

Flex’s goal is to make the underlying payment rails invisible to customers by embedding stablecoin settlement into its private banking experience. Rather than requiring businesses to manage crypto wallets or navigate blockchain technology, Flex uses stablecoins behind the scenes to make international payments feel as seamless as domestic ones.

“Middle-market business owners are one of the most important and underserved customers in finance globally,” said Flex CEO and Founder Zaid Rahman. “Depending on the type of owner, they’ll tell you their vendors are spread across the US, Poland, Brazil, etc; their accounts hold currency outside of just USD; and they have to oscillate across 2-3 vendors and layers of fees just to do business outside their country.”

Flex Global raises the competitive stakes for Brex and Ramp by expanding Flex beyond domestic banking, credit, and expense management into global financial infrastructure. Both rivals already support international cards and vendor payments, while Brex has also been developing stablecoin-based global transfers. Flex differentiates itself with its focus on middle-market business owners and its effort to combine cross-border payments, multi-currency accounts, credit, banking, and personal wealth management within a single private-banking relationship. That approach could help Flex compete less as another spend-management platform and more as the primary financial institution for globally active entrepreneurs.

Views: 25