Center Raises $30M in Series C Financing Round to Expand Card-First Expense Technology Stack

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Dec 05, 2023, 08:30 ET

Top Tier Capital Partners Leads Round With Support From Existing Investor Durable Capital Partners LP, Bringing Total Funding to Over $140 Million

BELLEVUE, Wash., Dec. 5, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Center, a software company modernizing expense management, today announced a $30M Series C fundraise. Funds from the Series C round will be used to accelerate innovation, broaden distribution, and drive to profitability. The round comes on the heels of Center's integrated travel and expense launch, reinforcing the company's mission to transform spend management with a card-first approach, usage-based pricing model, and expanded product offerings. The business has continued to scale with +64% customer growth year-over-year.

Amidst a backdrop of inflation and a rise in business travel, streamlining and controlling corporate spend remains a top priority for businesses. Center's card-first approach delivers complete visibility and control of employee spend, eliminating patchwork expense systems and enabling better management of decentralized purchasing. Center will leverage its infusion of capital to continue developing new features and capabilities that address customer pain points of rigid 'one-size-fits-all' expense management and integrated travel and expense solutions.

One key area of innovation will focus on creating an open platform targeted at both vertical software developers and financial institutions. The company will offer client libraries and APIs that enable third-parties to embed card and expense management features into existing workflows. Insights from EY show the value of intelligent integration, noting that organizations can lower payment processing costs and gain visibility through a consolidation of payment types. The use of purchasing cards (p-cards) and corporate cards provide more control over small spend amounts if data is captured within integrated environments, resulting in up to 17% cost savings in travel and expense categories.

"We are confident that how a payments platform integrates with other software packages will not only become a top priority for customers across industries but will also evolve into the most crucial payments differentiator," said Naveen Singh, CEO of Center. "Opening up our platform and creating an ecosystem that can be deeply integrated, customized, and embedded natively inside of existing web and mobile applications provides value for the corporate customer, developer partners, and financial institutions alike. We see a fully integrated approach as the next frontier of innovation for expense management."

"Center's enriched tech portfolio underlines the company's vision of providing a seamless, end-to-end expense management experience from sales to deployment," said Garth Timoll, Managing Director at Top Tier Capital. "As evidenced by continuous business momentum and customer growth, their card-first approach is redefining what effective expense management is for the modern era. We look forward to supporting their growth in this next phase."

"We believe in Center's vision of building a modernized expense management experience and are reiterating our commitment to this partnership with our additional investment," said Henry Ellenbogen, Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer at Durable Capital Partners LP. "Center's focus on expanding their tech stack and offering plug and play solutions increases value to existing customers and unlocks multiple entry points into the market, creating new opportunities to serve a broader range of customers."

About Center
Center is a software company modernizing corporate card, travel, and employee expense management with one integrated solution. Our corporate card and connected software gives businesses real-time visibility into all employee spending, automates traditional expensing and accounting tasks, simplifies travel booking, and provides finance teams with the controls and data needed for optimal decision making. With a usage-based business model requiring no upfront investment, our card-first experience combines self-service configurability with first-class deployment to ensure customer success. Center is a privately held company headquartered in Bellevue, WA with team members nationwide. For more information, please visit getcenter.com.

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SOURCE Center