Investing in Soldo, a Pan-European Corporate Spend Management Platform

Companies' spend management efforts are aimed at saving money. But as the volume and complexity of corporate spend and approval flows increase, outdated and often manual processes hamper companies' ability to control and oversee them in real time. This results in overspending, wasted time, cost duplication, poor resource allocation, failure to keep pace with competitors, and ineffective decision-making. Perhaps most critically, as companies begin to pivot or recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, poor spend management reduces the working capital they need to make new investments.

According to a recent survey, businesses in Europe alone are losing £301 billion annually—and an estimated 2% of revenue—due to inefficient spend management. Almost one in two European business leaders said they were unsure of their current levels of working capital, and 88% of European CEOs said they lack full confidence in their ability to invest in future growth, citing overspending and cash flow problems as the main barriers.

The travel and expense management (T&E) software market, which reached $2.3 billion in 2019, has tried to respond to these issues. However, the first generation of expense management solutions offers limited functionality, focuses mainly on travel, and has proven inadequate for the daily management of businesses and evolving team structures. As a result, spend management—which ideally should help catalyze growth—has largely remained an inefficient policing function and, at worst, a source of significant loss.

A promising exception is Soldo, a leading European spend management platform that offers a wide variety of solutions to businesses of all sizes, from prepaid physical and digital cards to digital wallets and fuel expense tracking. Founded in 2015, Soldo offers a full-stack payment and software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that can integrate into nearly any Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution and adapt to companies' complex authorization and control requirements.

Soldo's platform enables users to capture receipts on the spot with a mobile app, export data to any accounting system in a couple of clicks, and see transaction information the minute a purchase is made. Companies can give Soldo Cards, which typically replace traditional corporate cards, to employees and contractors alike, setting access levels individually and setting rules that cardholders must follow in order to use them. This helps to increase transparency for corporate finance teams and drive efficiency by automating or circumventing the spend approval and reimbursement process. Soldo also offers single-use cards for situations where there is either no trust or no need for continuous use.

This scalability, integration, and ease of use has helped Soldo outpace competitors and serve over 26,000 customers in over 30 countries, including small businesses, startups, and groups within enterprises such as Mercedes-Benz, Sony, and Toyota.

Before the pandemic, Soldo clients primarily used its platform for T&E and B2B expenses such as marketing and client acquisition campaigns. Since then, it also has been selected by public entities working on reducing the impact of COVID-19—demonstrating its flexibility and vast potential.

Soldo boasts an exceptionally experienced and well-respected management team. Founder and CEO Carlo Gualandri is a repeat entrepreneur who previously founded Virgilio, Italy's first web portal, and Gioco Digitale, which became the country's largest online gaming site. Carlo d'Acunto, Soldo's CTO, co-founded Gioco Digitale with Carlo Gualandri and served as CTO of Intent Group. In addition, Mariano Dima, Soldo's president, was Global CMO at Vrbo/HomeAway as well as past CMO at Visa.

Given Soldo's strong traction, uniquely user-friendly and scalable platform, and distinctive management team, we are optimistic about its future growth. We are therefore excited to announce Citi Ventures' participation in Soldo's $180MM Series C funding round. We look forward to working with Soldo and offer our best wishes to Carlo, Carlo, Mariano, and the rest of the Soldo team.

For more information, email Luis Valdich at luis.valdich@citi.com or Alix Brunet at alix.brunet@citi.com.