Dive Brief:

• Mesh Payments, a corporate expense management company, has raised $60 million in financing from investors that include Alpha Wave, Tiger Global, TLV Partners, Entreé Capital and Meron Capital, according to a Wednesday release from the firm. The latest funding round brings the total amount the company has raised to $123 million.
• The company said it plans to use the capital to create more products and become more competitive in the market of business-to-business payments. Mesh Payments aids corporate clients in managing everything from employee travel expenses to software subscriptions.
• The funding follows the company’s partnership with the international payroll provider Papaya Global in April, enabling Mesh Payments to offer its services on that company’s platform. Mesh Payments noted that it plans to announce more strategic partnerships with international payments firms “in the near future.”

Dive Insight:

Mesh Payments has spent the past two years raising funds to support its growth. In February 2021, the company raised $13 million, which it said it would use to improve its sales and marketing operations and partner with other management firms. In July, Mesh CEO and co-founder Oded Zehavi said the company planned to pursue roughly $50 million in debt financing to support its financial operations and provide customers with better payment terms. That was after raising $50 million in equity financing in December.

The company aims to give chief financial officers more tools to cut costs in the current economic downturn, and shift from a prior period of growth.

“Since day one, Mesh has focused on giving CFOs the automation and insights they need to more effectively manage their day-to-day operations,” Zehavi said in the release. “As companies operationalize distributed and remote workforce models, holistic visibility over company spend is even more critical. The confidence in Mesh from investors and customers, even in a turbulent market, reinforces that our finance automation platform is what companies want to help them navigate a cost-cutting environment.”

The funding round follows companies seeking more expense management assistance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Compound annual growth for business spend management software is expected to be about 10.5% between 2019 and 2024, according to a report from WiseGuy Research.

Eyeing the rise in demand for expense management tools, other payment firms have recently raised funds or made vital acquisitions. Ramp, an expense management peer, raised $750 million in venture capital funding in March to kickstart the development of automation tools and add more features. Meanwhile, Prepaid Technologies bought WorkStride in July to enhance its corporate expense management, disbursements and rewards offerings.