Connecting a payment application to credit card processing networks is difficult, expensive and beyond the resources of most businesses. Meanwhile, bookkeepers can end up spending hours recording and registering transaction details from data travelling from platforms like PayPal to accounting software like Quickbooks.
Toronto-based startup Snapy, an offspring of The Next 36‘s most recent cohort, can make life a lot easier for bookkeepers. Specifically, the platform allows startups to integrate their PayPal payment data to Quickbooks and Xero. They’re fully integrated with Stripe and Authorize.NET as well.
“There’s a lack of data transfer that takes place between payment gateways and accounting platforms,” cofounder Aditya Dhoot told BetaKit. “We automate this entire process.”
While having PayPal integration with accounting software like Quickbooks might seem like a no-brainer to an outsider, Dhoot said its not in Quickbooks’s best interests to do that. So Quickbooks came out with their own solution, Intuit Merchant Services, which allows businesses to process credit cards through QuickBooks, via mobile phones, tablet, web browser, or point of sale systems.
But PayPal remains the most used online payment platform.
In comes Snapy. Dhoot said that there will “always be a need” for the service as long as there are multiple payment gateways and ecommerce platforms where data must be transferred from one platform to another.
The small team at Snapy came about as a result of The Next 36’s most recent cohort, which graduated in mid-August. Dhoot’s background is in software engineering, and he said that if any employee is using various platforms for their work, much of the time is spent simply transferring data from one platform to the other. “The biggest problem existed in accounting, which was the transfer of data from PayPal to quickbooks online.”
Hearing about the tool immediately made me wonder whether it’s ripe for acquisition from one of the major platforms like PayPal, Quickbooks or even the Toronto-based Freshbooks. Dhoot replied that mentors and advisors have actually told them that they’re building a product that can be easily acquired. But he held firm that the team is building a strong product before worrying about anything else. “Our focus on is its proving a point that big software companies need to work with each other to make sure that the platforms connect and integrate well with each other,” said Dhoot.
Snapy’s Deran Guo added that “our end game is still not clear.”
“Talking to one of these big corps is an option but its not the only option that we’re looking at.”