Lyon-based Agicap raises €45M: Co-founder & CEO Sébastien Beyet on helping SMBs and midmarket companies with treasury management

Lyon-based Agicap, a treasury management platform, announced on Tuesday that it has secured €45M in a Series C funding round led by AVP.

The announcement comes around three years after raising €82M in its Series B round of funding led by Greenoaks.

Fund utilisation

The company will use the funds to continue investing in its products, people, and growth initiatives.

The proceeds from the transaction will support expanding the sales and customer success teams, particularly outside of France, where other countries already account for over 50 per cent of total revenue.

Talking about the challenges while expanding its operation to Silicon Canals, Sébastien Beyet, Co-founder & CEO of Agicap, says, “It is crucial to maintain a high level of expertise as we expand our business teams internationally. We have achieved this on a large scale in France, and we are confident that we can replicate this success in other countries.”

The company intends to do this by staying closely connected to its customers to ensure its future product developments align with their expectations.

“Since our inception, we have primarily focused on direct sales channels. We aim to accelerate our partnerships and indirect channels in the coming months. As this is a new endeavour for Agicap, we will seek guidance from experienced external partners to further develop these channels,” adds Beyet.

Furthermore, there will be a focus on improving the go-to-market strategy by expanding indirect channels through a network of treasury partners and system integrators.

Agicap wants to improve its products and services by enhancing its software and organisation to better meet the needs of mid-market firms.

This includes features for managing foreign exchange risk and credit management modules.

“Companies are becoming more internationalised (beyond Europe) and are managing multiple currencies. They not only seek effective currency management but also want to anticipate foreign exchange risks for their business,” says Beyet. “We currently offer our customers a payment collection solution that enables them to monitor their receivables and automate customer reminders. Implementing Credit Management would allow our customers to better anticipate risks associated with unpaid invoices,” he adds.

Offering next-gen treasury management

Founded in 2016 by Lucas Bertola (CTO), Sebastien Beyet (CEO), and Clément Mauguet (Chief Expansion Officer), Agicap provides C-suite executives and finance teams easy access to real-time cash flow data—both current and historical—as well as a full range of treasury management tools.

“We are the only midmarket first offer in the market, as most of our competitors are designed for larger companies (above €1B annual revenue),” says Beyet.

Currently, the company supports more than 8,000 companies by simplifying the consolidation of cash flow data.

This is achieved through unique and direct bank connectivity, (via local protocols, an extensive network of real-time APIs, and Swift).

Additionally, the company integrates with ERPs (Enterprise Resource Planning), financial systems, and other business enablement tools.

The company’s bank and ERP connectivity layer is one of the most comprehensive in the market, claims Beyet.  

According to Beyet, a wide network of banks is supported by reliable local protocols (EBICS, EDITRAN), international connectivity (SFTP, SWIFT), and APIs.

This system offers better visibility into cash positions—past, present, and future—at the overall, entity, bank, and currency levels.

It also provides automated and secure payments, which saves time in managing data and processing payments.

The company’s platform also offers a centralised solution for short-term cash management (monitoring balances, transfers, and short-term investments) and long-term management (cash forecasts, debt management, and long-term investments).

Additionally, the platform improves cash performance through digitisation of supplier invoices, improvement of customer receivables collection, and management of corporate cards.

“We believe that cash management goes beyond the Finance team and should involve practically all departments of the company: executives (especially CEOs and CFOs), Sales teams (for collections), Purchasing teams (for disbursements), etc. We strive to position cash culture at the heart of companies’ strategies,” adds Beyet.

Enhancing cash performance

Cash management and forecasting have become top priorities for CFOs navigating increasingly uncertain macroeconomic conditions.

“With high interest rates and economic uncertainties, the demand for cash management is booming. Managing cash ineffectively can significantly impact financial results,” explains Beyet.

According to the company’s recent survey of 500 European CFOs, mid-market companies lose, on average, each year:

• Approximately €40,000 due to overdraft fees from poor cash balancing within the organisation.
• Around €400,000 in missed financial investment opportunities because idle cash is not utilised productively.

Besides streamlining the cash flow management process, the company also aims to enhance cash performance with more accurate short-term forecasting and cash pooling capabilities through balancing options to help limit overdraft fees.

The company adopts improved long-term financing strategies. It helps clients invest more frequently by reducing cash reserves in current accounts and choosing self-financing over external financing.

Additionally, structured Accounts Receivable (AR) automation can help decrease Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) and minimise unpaid invoices, says Beyet.

Why the reliance on Excel-based processes?

A recent survey conducted by Agicap in partnership with Innofact, involving 500 European CFOs, found that 80 per cent of midmarket firms still rely on Excel-based processes to manage and forecast their cash positions.

This method is manual and time-consuming, with only 41 per cent of the firms performing long-term cash forecasts.

Explaining the reliance on Excel-based processes, Beyet explains, “As interest rates were low (& cash cheap), treasury management was not a top priority for Finance teams and the initial wave of financial tools primarily focused on accounting tools and ERP systems and they did not equip themselves with dedicated treasury management tools. With higher interest rates and uncertainty, the paradigm has changed.”

“The Treasury Management category, particularly for SMBs and mid-market companies, is relatively new. We were among the pioneers in this dedicated space,” he adds.

Revenue growth, expansion, and more

Since its Series B funding in 2021, the company has increased its revenue by 7x and expanded into four regions — DACH, Italy, UK & Ireland, and Spain.

Additionally, the company improved its Treasury Management System with new product offerings — accounts payable automation, accounts receivable automation and spend management, designed to serve larger midmarket customers as the company scales upmarket.

The investor

AVP is a global venture capital firm specialising in high-growth, technology-enabled companies, managing more than $2B in assets across four investment strategies: Venture, Growth, Late Stage, and Fund of Funds.

Since its establishment in 2016, AVP has invested in more than 60 technology companies in the Venture and Growth stages in the U.S. and Europe.

“We are thrilled to invest in the exceptional team at Agicap as they continue on their path to becoming the next-generation global Treasury Management System. Agicap has the best-in-class technology and the deepest product offering with the highest accuracy. We were thoroughly impressed by the product-driven culture, strong customer references, rapid growth, and seamless ability to scale in different markets. We look forward to being a long-term partner of Agicap as they continue on their global expansion journey,” says Warda Shaheen, General Partner, AVP