Weav raises $4.3M to knit together a universal API for commerce platforms

Weav, which is building a universal API for commerce platforms, is emerging from stealth today with $4.3 million in funding from a bevy of investors, and a partnership with Brex.

Founded last year by engineers Ambika Acharya, Avikam Agur and Nadav Lidor after participating in the W20 YC batch, Weav joins the wave of fintech infrastructure companies that aim to give fintechs and financial institutions a boost. Specifically, Weav’s embedded technology is designed to give these organizations access to “real time, user-permissioned” commerce data that they can use to create new financial products for small businesses.  

Its products allow its customers to connect to multiple platforms with a single API that was developed specifically for the commerce platforms that businesses use to sell products and accept payments. Weav operates under the premise that allowing companies to build and embed new financial products creates new opportunities for e-commerce merchants, creators and other entrepreneurs. 

Left to right: Co-founders Ambika Acharya, Nadav Lidor and Avikam Agur; Image courtesy of Weav

In a short amount of time, Weav has seen impressive traction. Recently, Brex launched Instant Payouts for Shopify sellers using the Weav API. It supports platform integrations such as Stripe, Square, Shopify and PayPal. (More on that later.) Since its API went live in January, “thousands” of businesses have used new products and services built on Weav’s infrastructure, according to Lidor. Its API call volume is growing 300% month over month, he said.

And, the startup has attracted the attention of a number of big-name investors, including institutions and the founders of prominent fintech companies. Foundation Capital led its $4.3 million seed round, which also included participation from Y Combinator, Abstract Ventures, Box Group, LocalGlobe, Operator Partners, Commerce Ventures and SV Angel. 

A slew of founders and executives also put money in the round, including Brex founders Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi; Ramp founder Karim Atiyeh; Digits founders Jeff Seibert and Wayne Chang; Hatch founder Thomson Nguyen; GoCardless founder Matt Robinson and COO Carlos Gonzalez-Cadenas; Vouch founder Sam Hodges; Plaid’s Charley Ma as well as executives from fintechs such as Square, Modern Treasury and Pagaya.

Foundation Capital’s Angus Davis said his firm has been investing in fintech infrastructure for over a decade. And personally, before he became a VC, Davis was the founder and CEO of Upserve, a commerce software company. There, he says, he witnessed firsthand “the value of transactional data to enable new types of lending products.”

Foundation has a thesis around the type of embedded fintech that Weav has developed, according to Davis. And it sees a large market opportunity for a new class of financial applications to come to market built atop Weav’s platform.

“We were excited by Weav’s vision of a universal API for commerce platforms,” Davis wrote via email. “Much like Plaid and Envestnet brought universal APIs to banking for consumers, Weav enables a new class of B2B fintech applications for businesses.”

How it works

Weav says that by using its API, companies can prompt their business customers to “securely” connect their accounts with selling platforms, online marketplaces, subscription management systems and payment gateways. Once authenticated, Weav aggregates and standardizes sales, inventory and other account data across platforms and develops insights to power new products across a range of use cases, including lending and underwriting; financial planning and analysis; real-time financial services and business management tools.

For the last few years, there’s been a rise of API companies, as well as openness in the financial system that’s largely been focused on consumers, Lidor points out.

“For example, Plaid brings up very rich data about consumers, but when you think about businesses, oftentimes that data is still locked up in all kinds of systems,” he told TechCrunch. “We’re here to provide some of the building blocks and the access to data from everything that has to do with sales and revenue. And, we’re really excited about powering products that are meant to make the lives of small businesses and e-commerce, sellers and creators much easier and be able to get them access to financial products.”

In the case of Brex, Weav’s API allows the startup to essentially offer instant access to funds that otherwise would take a few days or a few weeks for businesses to access.

“Small businesses need access as quickly as possible to their revenue so that they can fund their operations,” Lidor said.

Brex co-CEO Henrique Dubugras said that Weav’s API gives the company the ability to offer real-time funding to more customers selling on more platforms, which saved the company “thousands of engineering hours” and accelerated its rollout timeline by months.

Clearly, the company liked what it saw, considering that its founders personally invested in Weav. Is Weav building the “Plaid for commerce”? Guess only time will tell.

Investors, founders report hot market for API startups

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To be frank, I do not know how to value Honest Company

The Honest Company, a heavily venture-backed consumer goods company, announced an IPO price range this morning, telling investors that it expects to sell shares in its debut at $14 to $17 apiece. The former startup is selling 6,451,613 shares in its debut, while existing shareholders are letting 19,355,387 shares go.

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Honest’s IPO is not very large. The company’s own offered shares are worth $109.7 million at the top end of its range. Furthermore, because the company’s final private raise was worth $200 million back in 2018, it’s a comparatively modest sum.

Today, we’re digging into the Honest Company’s IPO pricing: We’ll calculate its IPO valuation range across a few different share counts, bring to bear its final private valuations and compare the entire dataset to its preliminary Q1 2021 numbers.

We care because IVP and Fidelity, Lightspeed and General Catalyst, ICONIQ and M13, Dragonner and others put capital into the Jessica Alba-founded company worth just over $500 million while private, according to Crunchbase. That’s an enormous bet.

Per its filings, Alba remains the company’s chief creative officer and chairs its board.

We owe it to our general understanding of the venture market to better understand what Honest is worth and why. Is this a company going public while markets are hot so it can try to limp across the finish line? Or is Honest something honestly more exciting? Let’s find out.

Honest Company’s IPO worth

Using a simple share count of 90,518,137 outstanding after its IPO, Honest is worth $1.27 billion to $1.54 billion at $14 to $17 per share. On a fully diluted basis, Renaissance Capital calculates that the former startup is worth $1.6 billion at its midpoint value, a figure that we estimate rises to around $1.75 billion at the top end of its anticipated price range.

Are those strong numbers? There are two ways to measure: against the company’s final private price, or we can use its recent financial performance as a yardstick.

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China’s e-commerce giant JD.com starts paying some staff in digital yuan

China’s plan to introduce its digital currency is getting a lot of help from its tech conglomerates. JD.com, a major Chinese online retailer that competes with Alibaba, said Monday that it has started paying some staff in digital yuan (since January), the virtual version of the country’s physical currency.

China has been busy experimenting with digital currency over the past few months. In October, Shenzhen, a southern city known for its progressive economic policies, doled out 10 million yuan worth of digital currency to 500,000 residents, who could then use the money to shop at certain online and offline retailers.

Several other large Chinese cities have followed Shenzhen’s suit. The residents in these regions must apply through selected banks to start receiving and paying by digital yuan.

The electronic yuan initiative is a collective effort involving China’s regulators, commercial banks and technology solution providers. At first glance, the scheme still mimics how physical yuan is circulating at the moment; under the direction of the central bank, the six major commercial banks in China, including ICBC, distribute the digital yuan to smaller banks and a web of tech solution providers, which could help bring more use cases to the new electronic money.

For example, JD.com partnered with the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) to deposit the digital income. The online retailer has become one of the first organizations in China to pay wages in electronic yuan; in August, some government workers in the eastern city of Suzhou also began getting paid in the digital money.

Across the board, China’s major tech companies have actively participated in the buildout of the digital yuan ecosystem, which will help the central government better track money flows.

Aside from JD.com, video streaming platform Bilibili, on-demand services provider Meituan and ride-hailing app Didi have also begun accepting digital yuan for user purchases. Gaming and social networking giant Tencent became one of the “digital yuan operators” and will take part in the design, R&D and operational work of the electronic money. Jack Ma’s Ant Group, which is undergoing a major overhaul following a stalled IPO, has also joined hands with the central bank to work on building out the infrastructure to move money digitally. Huawei, the telecom equipment titan debuted a wallet on one of its smartphone models that allows users to spend digital yuan instantaneously even if the device is offline.

Updated the article to clarify the timeline of the digital salary rollout.

China’s digital yuan tests leap forward in Shenzhen

What China’s fintech market can teach the world

 

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New Square inventory management features now available

There are new Square inventory management features available for Square for Retail sellers, to help automate and improve one of the most challenging, but critical, processes businesses of all sizes face.

Online merchants will be only too familiar with inventory management, but for offline retailers starting to operate in the online world the need for robust inventory management suddenly becomes a key element to transitioning to a digital world. The New Square inventory management features like Easy Item Create, Quick Inventory Counting, and Smart Stock Alerts to provide sellers greater control over their inventory management, and improve efficiency with better ways to create, count, and reorder inventory.

“Taking stock used to be an all-night affair, but with Quick Inventory Counting we can just use a barcode scanner to quickly and easily get an accurate view of our inventory. Up-to-date inventory means no more accidental sales of out-of-stock items, which is disappointing to our customers, and Smart Stock Alerts enable us to improve cash flow and replenish our best-sellers before we miss a sale.”
– Kamala Allison, owner, Fybr Bamboo

The ability to reach buyers wherever they are, whether that be in store, online, or across social media, is more important than ever. As a result of shifting consumer preferences, the impact of staggered reopening schedules, and a shift to online selling, an omnichannel presence is no longer a “nice to have,” but has become critical for long-term success. In fact, a recent survey by Square revealed that nearly 90% of retailers are now selling online.

For retailers, access to real-time insights into what products are available, when, and where, is key as businesses look to expand their sales channels. Many sellers view inventory as one of the most frustrating and difficult tasks they encounter because building out a product catalog, counting inventory, and keeping stock at the right levels is traditionally a manual and labour-intensive process.

With the introduction of Easy Item Create, Quick Inventory Counting, and Smart Stock Alerts in Square for Retail, retailers will be able to perform a full or partial inventory count quickly and easily, and get a heads up when they’re running low on an item so they can reorder. Quick Inventory Counting helps sellers easily keep their stock counts accurate with simple barcode scanning, and Smart Alerts use machine learning to anticipate when an item is going to run out of stock and automatically helps sellers reorder. Finally, Easy Item Create helps sellers quickly build out their catalogue and get it ready for sale across any channel, by populating item information with just a scan of a barcode.

“Last year was a challenging one for retailers. We’re looking forward to providing sellers with access to the tools they need to prepare for reopenings and the year ahead. We’re also excited to help sellers continue to automate difficult, but necessary tasks like inventory management, and get back to doing what they love – running their business.”
– Roshan Jhunja, GM, Square for Retail

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Newegg welcomes Dogecoin as a payment method

To celebrate Dogeday Newegg announced that they are now accepting Dogecoin as a payment method at Newegg.com.

Newegg has been quick to embrace the shift to cryptocurrency. In 2014, the company was the first major e-retailer to accept Bitcoin for purchases made on the Newegg platform. Similarly, Newegg is among the first to enable customers to pay with Dogecoin while shopping online. When completing an order on Newegg.com, customers who want to pay with Dogecoin simply click “Edit” in the payment section on the checkout page, then select BitPay. Customers can then complete their transactions using Dogecoin held in their digital wallet.

“The excitement and momentum around cryptocurrency are undeniable, and the recent surge in Dogecoin value underscores the need to make it easier for customers to make purchases with this popular cryptocurrency, We’re committed to making it easy for our customers to shop however works best for them, and that means letting them complete transactions with the payment method that suits them best. To that end, we’re happy to give Dogecoin fans an easy way to shop online for tech.”
– Andrew Choi, Sr. Brand Manager, Newegg

The first cryptocurrency to go viral was Bitcoin, founded in 2009. Since then we have seen more cryptocurrencies making their way into the spotlight and Dogecoin is one of the more recent ones. In 2020 we wrote about the possibility that cryptocurrency was dead for ecommerce as then, very few marketplaces had adopted it as a payment method. Since the pandemic caused a boom in ecommerce things have changed slightly and it seems to be making its appearance in more places but is it here to stay? The still very unpredictable fluctuation of the digital currency makes it a valid question as to whether or not is here for good, one thing is for sure though, Coronavirus has caused it to rise once again.

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Retail sales volumes – ONS March 2021

Latest ONS figures out today reveal that retail sales volumes continued to recover in March 2021, with an increase of 5.4% when compared with the previous month reflecting the effect of the easing of coronavirus (COVID-19) restrictions on consumer spending; sales were 1.6% higher than February 2020 before the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

Non-food stores provided the largest positive contribution to the monthly growth in March 2021 sales volumes, aided by strong increases of 17.5% and 13.4% in clothing stores and other non-food stores respectively.

The proportion spent online decreased to 34.7% in March 2021, down from 36.2% in February 2021 but still above the 23.1% reported in March 2020; the value of online spending did increase in March, but spending in-store increased at a faster rate. If you exclude food, online non-food sales captured 39.5% of total retail sales volumes.

Online spending increased in March 2021, up 0.6% when compared with February 2021, with strong growth in textile, clothing and footwear stores of 10.9%. This was the largest monthly growth in the sector since June 2020 with feedback from retailers suggesting that the upcoming easing of coronavirus restrictions had prompted consumers to update their wardrobes in preparation for being able to meet friends and family outdoors again.

“Our analysis shows that we’re not going to see a full-scale return from online shopping back to bricks and mortar stores. In fact, 92% of consumers said they plan to continue spending online post-pandemic, showing strong intent to continue buying vitamins, OTC medicines, published content and clothing online. Retailers are busy adapting to this transformation in consumer behaviour. Those that get the balance between online and in-store experience right will emerge stronger.”
– Gizem Günday, Partner, McKinsey & Company

The net result is that online retail remains strong, but consumers once again have a choice of whether to shop online or shop in store. Service will be key to keeping those consumers that intend to continue to buy online.

To make sure you are meeting consumer expectations in 2021, sign up for our webinar with GFS which is being held on the 29th March. In the webinar we will examine the gap between consumers’ delivery & returns experiences compared to their expectations.

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euCONSENT regulatory online protection for European children

In a step towards enabling stronger regulatory online protection for European children, a consortium of twelve of the continent’s leading academic institutions, NGOs and technology providers has been awarded EU funding to design, deliver and pilot a new Europe-wide euCONSENT system. This solution will allow service providers to verify the age of their users to protect them from harmful content, and will ensure that younger children have parental consent before they share personal data. The Age Verification Providers Association is a leading member of the team that will deliver this system.

euCONSENT is a European Commission project under the call: “Outline and trial an infrastructure dedicated to the implementation of child rights and protection mechanisms in the online domain based on the GDPR and other existing EU legislation relevant for the child within the online domain”.

The objective of this project, initiated by the European Parliament, is to demonstrate an interoperable technical infrastructure dedicated to the implementation of child protection mechanisms (such as age verification) and parental consent mechanisms as required by relevant EU legislation (such as the Audio-Visual Media Services Directive (AVMSD) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Whilst the UK is no longer in the EU, it’s likely that euCONSENT or a similar framework could be adopted in the UK. A concern is, knowing the EU’s track record on Cookies with horrendously annoying popups on websites, that the EU avoid similar steps to further disrupt general internet browsing. We can all agree that children should be protected, but we can probably also agree that a solution that is useable and doesn’t include adults incessantly clicking on popups should be a pre-requisite.

The euCONSENT solution will be designed with help from children and young people and under the guidance of the continent’s leading academic experts, NGOs and other key stakeholders in child rights and online safety. EU Kids Online, Eurochild and COFACE – FAMILIES EUROPE, amongst others, will provide regular input to the work of the project team, which will be advised by an expert panel, chaired by John Carr OBE, one of the world’s leading authorities on children’s and young people’s use of the internet and digital technologies.

The new system will then be used during a pilot phase by over 1,500 children, young people and parents from at least three EU Member States. Users’ experience will be independently evaluated to provide convincing evidence for this solution to be adopted across the EU, with hundreds of Europe’s kids already positioned as its most enthusiastic advocates to their peers, their parents and EU policymakers.

“We are delighted to have been given a pivotal role in designed a European-wide system to facilitate age verification and parental consent. AVPA members lead the world in this field, and we are keen to share our collective technical expertise with the euCONSENT project team, while benefiting from the views of children across the continent in how to deliver a solution that champions their rights online.”
– Alastair Graham, Co-Chair of the Age Verification Providers Association

“The euCONSENT consortium brings together Europe’s leading academics in the field of child rights, with input from a wide range of NGOs representing parents and children, to help design a Europe-wide system to protect children when they are online. This will be delivered by a first-class team of companies from Europe’s fast-growing Safetytech sector, independently audited and evaluated to give confidence to parents, children, websites, video-sharing platforms and policymakers that euCONSENT can deliver an efficient and effective mechanism to make the internet a safer place for European kids.”
– Kostas Flokas, Programme Director, CEO, Upcom

“Designing a system of child protection for the digital environment that is truly rights-respecting is an important task, and one that many families are calling for. The challenge will be to serve children’s best interests by balancing their rights to protection and safety with their rights to participation, inclusion and privacy, among other rights. It’s great that this project will consult European children from the outset, and be guided by their views also in formulating the project results.”
– Professor Sonia Livingstone, London School of Economics and Political Science

“The EU is committed to a safer digital environment. Protecting children from age-inappropriate material online, which may damage their safety and well-being, requires more than just ticking a box or entering a fake date of birth. If successful, this project can positively change the lives of many European families, giving parents peace of mind, and allowing the under 18s to fully and safely participate in life online.”
– June Lowery Kingston, Head of Unit Accessibility, Multilingualism & Safer Internet, European Commission

“Public trust and assurance for age verification and parental consent processes across Europe will need to be underpinned by robust standards, an operating framework and clear accountability. By working with the EU’s institutions, international standards bodies and certification schemes, the EU Consent programme will develop and deliver the frameworks needed to secure broad acceptability and confidence.”
– Tony Allen, Founder & CEO, Age Check Certification Scheme

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