Settle Now. Pay Later: Fuelling Strategic Growth with Settle
Warren Brown, Head of Product, Settle
In episode 90 of The Payments Show Podcast, I spoke to Warren Brown who is the Head of Product at Settle.
Settle is an all-in-one payments solution for growing consumer brands. It offers Payments, AP automation, Working Capital and more.
AUDIO VERSION: thepayments.show
Episode Highlights:
Reducing Complexity for B2B Payments
Growing brands are paying bills to their manufacturers / raw material suppliers / meta and others for marketing etc. And you say “oh, well that's a fairly simple process”: I can log into my bank, bill pay, and move the money. But what you quickly learn is that all of the touch points that need to happen prior to, and around, and after that payment, are what make the difference between the business running efficiently and the business running not efficiently.
Escape Spreadsheet Hell
From the moment that a CPG brand is placing a purchase order with their manufacturer, a lot of folks will start out managing that in a spreadsheet. And then they need to be updating that spreadsheet... And then they need to be updating that spreadsheet with 5 - 10 more pieces of information... And then they hire a few people... And now everyone is logging into the spreadsheet… Is the information structured? Is it up to date? Do I remember when I need to make that deposit? And as the business grows, as the number of SKUs grow, as the number of channels grow, the complexity grows.
B2B Buy Now Pay Later
We're both a workflow automation software platform, but then also a really convenient financing mechanism. If you've got an inventory order and the cash conversion cycle for that business might be 90 or 120 days. Money goes out the door to the manufacturer, and you're not churning that into cash for as much as 4 - 5 months. With Settle, customers just choose Pay with Settle, and that then allows them to select a repayment plan. Very similar to the Buy Now Pay Later that you see on consumer websites.
