When individuals make purchases online, they place items in the digital shopping cart and use a credit or debit card to complete the transaction instantly. Businesses operate differently, typically looking to pay later at some agreed-upon time frame between one week and 90 days. Most of these types of net transactions continue to be handled manually via paper invoices.
Two: A New Era for Net Payments
Two, an Oslo, Norway startup, wants to change that by bringing the world of net payments online and helping speed up transactions by making them digital. Today, the company announced an €18 million investment (approximately $19 million).
According to Andreas Mjelde, co-founder of Two, his company is taking a process that is largely paper-driven and offline and essentially transforming it into a purchase process that’s faster than a consumer using a card to make a purchase online.
"Effectively if you input our solution, you can now offer your business buyers or customers the ability to check out and complete a purchase in about 30 seconds," Mjelde explained. "And in that 30 seconds, you onboard them as an official customer yourself through Two. We underwrite and take care of both the credit and fraud risk, verify that the user is actually who they say they are, and allow the buyer to complete the transaction instantly."
Simplifying Net Payments for Small Businesses
Small business owners can buy a no-code solution, while larger ones can use an API-driven approach that links to their other systems. "Small businesses can get started with no code," Mjelde said. "There’s an out-of-the-box solution to start creating their orders and accepting payments through our system. Medium and large-sized businesses typically will integrate with our API. Our API is built to serve the merchant or seller’s normal order flow."
Mjelde recognized the need for such a product when he previously ran an e-commerce business, and ran into issues getting paid by businesses, which typically had larger transactions than individuals, but the net terms process was hard to navigate and required a ton of paperwork. That friction and complexity often resulted in lost sales.
Building a Solution
He started Two in 2020 to build a solution to make it easier for online businesses to deal with these types of payments. He launched the product in the second quarter of 2021, and reports growing 243% quarterly since. Today, the company has 70 employees.
Mjelde says that being a remote company with employees across the world has helped him to build diversity into his employee base. "We have people from all over the world working on our product," he said. "It’s really great to see how we can attract and retain talent from so many different countries."
Investment Round
Today’s €18 million round was led by Shine Capital and Antler, with participation from Sequoia Capital, Day One Ventures, Alumni Ventures, LocalGlobe, The Visionaries Club, Alliance VC and other unnamed investors. The latest investment brings the total raised by the company to €28 million (approximately $30 million).
The funding will be used to continue building out Two’s product and expanding its team. "We’re going to use this funding to build more integrations with e-commerce platforms," Mjelde said. "We want to make it as easy as possible for online businesses to use our solution."
Future Plans
Mjelde is excited about the potential for Two’s technology to disrupt the net payments industry. "We’re changing a process that’s been done manually for centuries," he said. "It’s a huge opportunity, and we’re just getting started."
