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French startup Hyperline wants to build the next generation Chargebee. Over the past two years, the startup has built a new billing platform that can be used for recurring subscriptions, one-time purchases, usage-based billing and more.
Hyperline has raised an initial funding round of 4 million euros from Index Ventures 2023 ($4.1 million at today’s exchange rate). And Index Ventures doubles this investment as it invests another $10 million in the startup.
While billing seems like a simple problem, it becomes a tedious problem when you start to scale. “With billing, what takes time is really the daily operations. Every day, when you have more than 200 or 300 customers, someone has to go to check that everything is correct”, the founder and CEO Lucas Bédout has told TechCrunch.
Sometimes, the price is not right. Other times, you forget to add some items to the invoice or the customer requests a partial refund. And, of course, automatic payments fail quite regularly for one reason or another.
“At the beginning, we said to ourselves, let’s look at the current tools like Chargebee, and we’ll do a little better than them. Except that 20% better is nice, but everything has changed so much that now it’s just different. Now , people are looking for automation, they don’t want to manually process invoices, send reminders, create quotes, etc. said Bédout.
In addition to subscription management, Hyperline has added other pricing models. For example, customers can set custom pricing on the fly or add some usage-based component so that customers pay for what they use. Hyperline also handles invoices directly.
And when it’s time to pay, Hyperline doesn’t process payments directly, but takes care of that part for you. “We manage the entire value chain, except payments… However, we do something that is quite nice on payments. We position ourselves as an orchestrator. Our customers do not directly use payment processors,” said Bédout .
Instead of juggling between different tabs to interact with Stripe, GoCardless, Airwallex or another payment processor, Hyperline acts as the interface to interact with these payment providers. It makes it easier to use different payment providers depending on the country or payment method.
Customers usually start with the web interface. They connect Hyperline to their CRM so sales teams can create quotes directly from the CRM. They also connect the platform with accounting software to process invoices and reconcile payments.
But Hyperline also offers an API, which can be particularly useful for synchronizing events directly from a data warehouse for usage-based billing.
There are currently 14 people working for Hyperline, but the company expects to grow to 25 employees in the near future. Clients include Lokki, Malou, ScorePlay, Gladia and Formance.
“The majority of our clients today generate between €3 and €10 million in revenue,” said Bédout. But Hyperline already thinks it can work with larger companies that handle a large volume of invoices. It is necessary to work with integration companies. And it’s something that Hyperline is already trying.
