Highbeam inks $7M to shine light on e-commerce-specific banking needs

techcrunch.com:

Highbeam, a New York-based neobank built for people building e-commerce brands on marketplaces like Shopify and Amazon, raised $7 million in seed funding to continue developing banking tools that cater to these entrepreneurs’ needs.

The one-year-old fintech startup, started by Samir Shergill and Gautam Gupta, provides banking features, access to transparent credit and cash management insights. It works with Blue Ridge Bank, N.A. to provide the banking services and debit card and The Currency Cloud Ltd. on payment services.

“We are the financial partner to help e-commerce brands scale,” CEO Shergill told TechCrunch. “Banks need to help with cash management as a company scales, but they also need to be a real financial partner, for example, giving advice on how to access credit. That is our approach.”

Sustainable profit growth has become more important for brands, especially when e-commerce growth exploded during the pandemic and has pulled back some as stores reopened, Shergill said.

Coupled with advertising and privacy changes on social media sites, brands are not able to scale by pouring money into those channels anymore. Instead, scaling is more complicated and Shergill believes it requires tools like Highbeam in order to bridge the gap between selling the business and the entrepreneur figuring it out themselves.

Highbeam’s e-commerce bank product. Image Credits: Highbeam

“Brands are having to do things like go omnichannel much earlier,” he added. “You used to be able to grow just on Shopify, but now you have to look at retail earlier.”

By focusing on e-commerce, Shergill said Highbeam is able to provide a single financial view of the business, where cash is coming in and going out, and help entrepreneurs decide the right