Rho launches Rho AP to help its SMB customers streamline invoices and payments
- Rho Technologies recently unveiled Rho AP to help its clients manage their accounts payable.
- The new solution allows business users to upload, code and submit invoices for same-day approval and payment.
Last week, Rho debuted its accounts payable commercial banking product, Rho AP. Rho AP is an extension of Rho’s core banking platform that allows companies to run their accounts payable processes while cutting costs and speeding up payments to vendors.
The New York-based fintech that provides financial services for startups and high growth businesses also raised $15 million in its Series A funding round with participation from Torch Capital and Inspired Capital. The proceeds will be directed to further expanding Rho AP.
“At Rho, we are dedicated to empowering the teams that run today’s growing companies,” said Everett Cook, the co-founder of Rho Technologies. “We’ve developed the modern commercial banking platform built around the way companies operate today: distributed team-oriented, transparent and built for scale. Rho AP is the next step on our mission to help teams work better together with money.”
Rho AP’s account’s payable automation streamlines the process of uploading invoices, getting approval, coding and providing payments. Payments are sent out the same day once approvals are received. The AP product removes the need for third party plugins for clients.
“We saw the pain customers experienced when using third-party solutions firsthand. Our own customers struggled to track payments sent by third-party AP solutions and complained about delays these platforms were causing them,” said Cook. “For us it was a natural next step in making Rho the comprehensive solution to bring teams together around finance. We were also shocked at how much some of our clients were paying for these solutions, given how unhappy they were with them.”
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In addition to the use of third-party integrations for accounts payable procedures, many businesses have opted for manual operations for generations. However, stay-at-home orders and remote work as a result of the pandemic have highlighted the need to digitize and automate the accounts payable function, which otherwise involves opening up mail, scanning invoices, seeking approvals and processing checks. Analog procedures have proven to be both inefficient and costly in the long run. According to a Business Insider report, AP automation can help businesses cut costs by 81 percent and improve efficiency by 73 percent.
“We have seen a surge in demand in AP even in markets where adoption has been slow until now,” said Daniel Saraste, the senior vice president of strategy and Innovation at cloud-based source-to-pay vendor Medius. “For many organizations, taking the leap from manual to automated has been priority number 3 on the list of projects. Last year we were being approached by companies saying ‘I have 800 paper invoices in my desk and my whole team is working remotely -- Help!’ The urgency is very real and fortunately we have adapted our processes so that we can onboard customers 100 percent remotely.”
Another issue that plagues businesses is that many AP software providers make profits by holding onto funding for long periods of time, deliberately delaying client funds before sending them out, according to Rho's Cook. He said that in 2019, almost a third of the largest AP software company’s profits were linked to interest from client fund delays.
Rho AP’s additional features include its storage of invoice and payment details for record keeping and auditing purposes. It also synchs customer and vendor data directly to the client’s accounting platform. Rho AP’s clients, including Caraway, Burrow and Hydrant, also have access to Rho’s embedded money transfer services, which include free domestic and international wires or its FX payments in 36 currencies, for which Rho charges 0.5 percent.
As of December 2020, Rho Business Banking has handled over $2 billion in annualized transaction volume for its clients. Rho was launched to provide finance software and commercial grade banking solutions to small and medium sized startups ignored by larger banks.
Rho partners with Evolve Bank and Trust for its banking products.