Invoice payment startup Marmalade raises $16m

Melbourne-based invoice payment platform Marmalade has raised $16 million in a round led by company CEO Luke Trickett’s independent investment group Blue Stamp Company.

The investment, which also includes participation from existing investor Paloma Capital, brings the total capital raised by Marmalade over the past four years to $32 million as the startup sets itself an ambitious target of processing $1 billion in payments across its platform in 2024.

Marmalade was co-founded by Trickett and Richard Johnson, a former head of data at Afterpay, in 2020 on a mission to help small to medium businesses (SMB) improve cashflow.

Developed in partnership with Paloma, an Australian venture studio that helped design and build the Afterpay platform, Marmalade is an invoice payment service that allows businesses to have their invoices paid on-demand without the need for traditional debtor finance arrangements.

Marmalade is already tracking towards its $1 billion target after last year transacting more than $500 million in invoices – driven by a 65 per cent year-on-year increase in customer numbers and a doubling of payment volumes and revenue.

Trickett says the take-up of Marmalade has come from a cross-section of businesses and from a range of industries.

“SMBs are the lifeblood of the Australian economy with entrepreneurs and leaders taking incredible risks to build a business that grows,” he says.

“Often frustrated by the limited support of traditional banking products, our customers are looking for new, innovative ways of managing their working capital and seeking a flexible, debt free alternative that puts their business growth back in their own hands, not the bank’s.

“It’s been exciting to see the continued diversification of our customer base to now also appeal to the mid-market, across various industries.”

Trickett is also founder of the lead investor in the latest funding round, Brisbane-based Blue Stamp Company, a low-profile funds manager originally established in 2010 with “patient” capital to invest in listed shares. The fund manager describes its mission as “long-term wealth creation through investing in businesses”.

Marmalade, which directly integrates into cloud accounting platforms such as Xero, QuickBooks and MYOB, generates revenue via a one-off fee from businesses that cash in invoices that are “pulled into” the platform.

The company says the service gives owners and finance teams an “always-on, debt-free, finance solution that is flexible to suit the changing needs of their business”.

Marmalade is also supported by an automated risk-management platform that the company says allows it to profitably scale into a customer base “that is typically too heterogeneous, too complex and ultimately too expensive for both banks and non-banks to service”. 

“Marmalade helps businesses manage their cash flow gracefully with a product that is truly unique in market,” says Ash Fogelberg, general partner at Paloma Capital. 

“Having worked with Luke and the team from early whiteboard concepts, through launch and growth of the Marmalade platform, we have developed a deep level of conviction in the team’s capability, integrity, and passion.

“Marmalade solves an extremely complex set of problems while still offering the end customer a simple and world-class experience.”

Marmalade has partnered with Paloma since inception with the venture studio assisting in product development as well as funding the business.

The Marmalade product went live with its first customer in October 2020 and since then two former Paloma tech team members have joined the Marmalade team, including its head of technology and engineering and a senior software engineer. 

While Trickett founded Marmalade with Johnson in 2020, Johnson stayed on at Afterpay until the beginning of 2021 as the company’s business potential began to emerge.

The company says that the experience of both founders provides the “backbone of a world-class fintech and lays strong foundations for Marmalade’s ambitious plans”.