Topi raises US$4.5 million

The Berlin-based start-up was founded by former employees of Apple and Goldman Sachs. Topi focuses on B2B commerce.

The Berlin-based start-up Topi has closed a pre-seed round of 4.5 million US dollars. Investors Index Ventures and Creandum led the round. Also participating were Hellofresh founder Dominik Richter, N26 founder Max Tayenthal, Thijn Lamers from the Adyen founding team and Fabian Wesemann, founder and CFO of Wefox. Topi aims to offer fast and frictionless payments for business-to-business (B2B) commerce worldwide.

The market for B2B payment solutions is expected to be worth 120 trillion US dollars and five times larger than the market for consumer payments (B2C) by 2028. Although consumers can already choose between many payment options, this is not yet the case in the area of commercial trade, according to Topi. "B2B payments are the unsexy cousin of consumer payments, but the opportunities are much greater," says Jan Hammer, General Partner at Index Ventures. "There are no fully digital end-to-end processes in B2B sales and no customer-friendly financing offers," says Charlotte Pallua, co-founder of Topi. The result is "suboptimal purchasing decisions, inefficient use of capital or lengthy bureaucratic processes." Topi now wants to change this.

The company was only founded this year. The two co-founders Charlotte Pallua and Estelle Merle got to know each other during their MBA at Harvard Business School in Boston: Pallua worked for Apple, where she experienced market needs at first hand. Merle spent four years at Goldman Sachs in London.