Toronto-based accounting software company FreshBooks is launching FreshBooks Payments, a new offering alongside American payments processor Stripe.
The company said FreshBooks Payments helps businesses onboard easier, improve cash flow, and help business owners invoice, track, and collect payments in one place. Businesses can send a Stripe payment link to their clients alongside invoices that, once paid, will be automatically recorded in FreshBooks.
FreshBooks Payments also allows business owners to request and receive payment in multiple currencies, store clients card details for proactive billing, and recurring payments so customers can set and forget.
FreshBooks said the new integrated payments offering, which uses Stripe Connect, builds upon its partnership established with Stripe in 2016. A FreshBooks spokesperson told BetaKit that, previously, users had to enter into an agreement with Stripe but FreshBooks Payments now makes it an end-to-end experience. Stripe claims its Connect offering is used by over 13,000 platforms and marketplaces, including Shopify and DoorDash.
“Stripe’s trusted payment infrastructure, and this partnership provides FreshBooks customers fast and secure payments with Connect’s latest feature updates and improvements,” FreshBooks’s general manager of payments, Shirley Hsu, said in a statement. “With FreshBooks Payments, customers can easily invoice and collect payments all in one place, keeping their finances up to date.”
Existing FreshBooks customers can now sign up for FreshBooks Payments, but new customers will get access in the summer.
Founded in 2004, FreshBooks aims to help small and medium-sized businesses manage finances, billing, payroll, payments, and client engagement through its accounting platform.
The new offering comes on the heels of a rough 2023 for the firm, where it laid off 10 percent of its employees in March before cutting another six percent, alongside a leadership team restructure, as it shuttered operations in North Carolina in November. Following the shuffle, which saw out president Mark Girvan and CEO Don Epperson, FreshBooks had lost at least five senior leaders since September 2022, including its president, CEO, CMO, CFO, and CTO.
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The troubles were attributed to economic downturn, which saw FreshBooks and many other Canadian tech companies shift focus from growth to profitability as fundraising became more difficult.
Just a few years prior, in 2021, FreshBooks made a point of its global expansion ambitions after it earned unicorn status with a $163 million CAD ($130 million USD) funding round. It continued that philosophy, acquiring German cloud accounting and invoicing software firm FastBill in 2021, a $100 million debt facility earmarked for strategic acquisitions and investments in August 2022, and bringing in a hypergrowth-experienced CFO in Wayne Jackson in September 2022.
San Francisco-based payments companies also recently launched similar offerings in Canada.
FinTech company Finix launched its business payments solution in the Canadian market in Febuary, while banking-as-a-service platform, Synctera, launched its payments integration, SyncteraPay, in March. SyncteraPay allows its customers to work with any payment provider and have all transaction information integrated into the Synctera Ledger.
Feature image courtesy FreshBooks.