I love the B2B e-invoicing and payments space for reasons I have enumerated previously. I especially love companies that work with nasty, complex invoices and then make the resulting payments.  I love them even more if the payments are then made to cash-strapped suppliers.  Companies that fill this bill are found in numerous industries:

• Freight
• Healthcare
• Telecom/Energy
• Facility services
• Clinical Trials
• Temp labor
• Consumer packaged goods
• Media
• Legal services
• Construction
• And many more arcane categories

Fintech

Fintech, the company, falls squarely into the “many more arcane categories” category. Despite its comically generic name, Fintech specializes in data and payments related to alcohol purchases.  That’s right, alcohol purchases.  Fintech proves once again that if there is a complex service that is highly regulated, or heavily taxed, there is money to be made processing the invoices and making the payments.

According to the Fintech website,

Fintech provides data and payment services to over 275,000 relationships between retailers and distributors nationwide. With over 2,200 distributors sending invoices daily, Fintech processes over 17.2 million invoices and $14.4 billion annually for the grocery, hotel, convenience store, drug store, restaurant and hospitality industries. 

 

I don’t know anything else about the business, but I’m betting with clients like Walmart, Walgreen’s, Chipotle to name just a few–and $14 billion in annual payments processed–they have a nice business going there.  And something tells me the booze business and its state-regulated invoicing process is here to stay.  Perhaps they can even diversify into marijuana!  Talk about taking a business to new highs!

If you know of an even more arcane B2B payments provider, especially one not in the industries listed above, please comment below.  They never cease to amaze me–and their investors.