Expense management fintech Cape raises gobsmacking $33.1 million in pre-Seed capital

Expense management platform Cape has raised a staggering $33.1 million in an Australian record for a pre-Seed round.

The cap table includes Aura Ventures, Investible, Scalare Partners, Mercury Capital and 15 business angels, including Stripe APAC Head of Startup practice, Tom Richardson and LegalVision founder Lachlan Knight, plus a handful of early Atlassian employees.

Founded in late 2020, the Sydney-based fintech now has a team of 18 on three continents and plans to double its headcount with the fresh cash, as well as building new products to cover the entirety of corporate spend.

Founder Ryan Edwards-Pritchard said he built Cape to help businesses “unlock expense nirvana” by saving time on financial administration work and cutting money associated with wasteful spending.

“Ultimately Cape aims to close the loop between spend and expense management by providing both as an all-in-one spend management platform,” he said.

Edwards-Pritchard said the startup is building the region’s APAC’s first finance automation platform issuing virtual corporate cards to help companies strengthen their cash flow. He’s leveraged CDR (aka open banking) technology to understand a client’s financial position and any subsequent changes to ensure they’re offering an appropriate line of credit.

“Cape provides businesses with full visibility and control on purchasing to cut wasteful spending and the time taken on financial administration work relating to expense management,” he said.

“Expense management is a famously frustrating area of technology with broken processes that see employees continuously having to carry the burden of footing the bill for company purchases made on their personal card, usually because getting it through the corporate provided system is too much hassle.”

The problem, Edwards-Pritchard said, is that many companies have disparate software vendors for expenses and corporate card solutions such as Expensify and American Express.

“Cape aims to provide a centralised node for internal expense controls, rooting out duplicate and unnecessary expenses to help companies lower their total expenses with corporate cards wrapped in software that helps companies track and control all spending,” he said.

“Businesses are able to set different limits for different individuals and teams, as well as centralizing all of their receipts, attaching them to each expense with integrations into cloud accounting software providers.

The sweetener from this fintech is a cashback offer on purchases, from a client coffee, to Uber rides or monthly subscription costs.

Cape makes its money via a small slice of customer spend as revenue via interchange income.

Investible investment director Daniel Veytsblit said the lack of innovation in the expenses management is what drew him to the company.

“Cape has taken a bold step forward to create an entirely new paradigm. It delivers a tangible solution to the biggest problems finance teams face as their companies grow,” he said.