Aldrich Capital Partners closes $26 million investment in Paymerang

Aldrich Capital Partners said Monday that it has made a $26 million investment in Paymerang LLC, a Richmond-area provider of electronic payment solutions for businesses. 
According to Aldrich, an investment firm based in Bethesda, Md., the money will buy out company investors and help Paymerang grow in the procure-to-pay space with new jobs, products, sales channels and operational infrastructure.

Paymerang, located on Midlothian Turnpike in Chesterfield County, plans to expand operations in the Richmond area, adding more than 100 jobs during the next five years.
“From its inception, Paymerang has transformed the way businesses pay their suppliers electronically, enabling them to be more efficient, secure and profitable,” company CEO Nasser Chanda said in a statement.  “… Our market is ripe for innovation, and we intend to work fast to develop solutions to the complex problems businesses face today.”

Paymerang began opertion in 2010. Founder Steve Winston, along with company employees, developed a new way to help business automate supplier payments. With Paymerang’s system, clients can pay all vendors electronically with a single payment file. By handling the entire process — from secure vendor enrollment to payment processing, reconciliation and customer service — Paymerang says it can offer an efficiency that saves hundreds of hours of finance time, security to protect payments from fraud and financial rewards that turn accounts payable into a profit center.

With manual, paper-laden processes increasingly falling by the wayside, it expects business to grow.

“We are delighted to invest in an innovative company like Paymerang that is defining the future of business payments,” Mirza Baig, founding partner of Aldrich, said in a statement.
“We expect to provide significant operational support to rapidly grow Paymerang through organic and acquisition-based growth. This is a vast market that is still in early innings, and we look forward to proving out our investment thesis over the coming years.”

Gov. Ralph Northam was on hand for Monday’s announcement at Paymerang’s office. He greeted the company’s team and spoke on the impact of the financing. “Virginia is proud to call itself home to innovators like Paymerang, and I am pleased to join them in celebrating Aldrich Capital’s investment in their future,” said Northam. “This significant step means Paymerang can provide even more entrepreneurs and businesses with the solutions they need to be more efficient, effective, and successful and, as a result, have an even broader impact on the growth of 21st-century jobs and Virginia’s economy.”

According to CB Insights & CrunchBase,  data collection companies that track funding rounds, acquisitions and other business intelligence, Aldrich’s $26 million investment represents the single-largest investment in a financial technology company in Virginia.

Currently, Paymerang serves clients around the country in education, health care, media, manufacturing and other industries. Paymerang says it processes more than $1.5 billion in payments annually to a network of over 60,000 suppliers from coast to coast, with 75 percent receiving electronic payments.