Aria

Every sector suffers from late payments, but some suffer more than others. Around 400 hauliers went bust last year, as late payments eroded profit margins amid rising costs. Meanwhile, 62% of SME recruitment and staffing firms are facing longer payment timelines than a year ago, impeding their ability to grow and invest in the future. Payment speed is becoming an existential necessity for these businesses. Read more about what European business leaders can do to create some breathing room in our CEO and co-founder Clément Carrier's interview with EuropeanBusinessMagazine. https://lnkd.in/er4aTynt

When it comes to the tight margins of a small business’s finances, the speed at which money moves is crucial, but it cannot come at the expense of accuracy. Our CEO and cofounder Clément Carrier shared his thoughts with Alison Coleman at Forbes on why capital is flocking to AI-native fintechs, and why that means startups have to be more disciplined than ever when it comes to adoption. At Aria, we’ve resisted the temptation to bolt AI onto everything, focusing instead on where it truly excels, and never sacrificing quality or security for the sake of speed. Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/eqAqBZeP

79%. That's the share of French companies covering cash-flow strain by delaying supplier payments instead of using a bank line, a new Ifop/Arc survey found. Only 57% draw on a bank overdraft. The majority option isn't credit. It's making someone else wait. Each delay passes one level down the chain, landing hardest on the smaller businesses least equipped to absorb it. 79% isn't a financing strategy. It's a queue, and someone's always at the back. That's the queue Aria removes: turning invoices into cash on issuance, so no one has to choose between their own survival and their supplier's.

€13 billion. That's how much cash French SMEs would have kept last year if bigger clients paid on time according to the Banque de France. Instead, it sat in someone else's account. Smaller businesses compensated: overdrafts, delayed payments to their own suppliers, stalled growth. Payment delays in France just hit a 12-year high. The pattern hasn't changed — the bigger the company, the worse the payer. €13 billion isn't a rounding error. It's growth, sitting on the wrong balance sheet. That's the gap Aria closes: turning invoices into cash on issuance, so smaller businesses stop financing everyone else's payment terms.

Today, Aria is closing a €7M new equity round, extending our Series A, led by 115K with 13books Capital returning. And separately, opening a new financing facility with close to €240M in invoice financing capacity, led by Nomura alongside Fost, and Sienna Investment Managers and Montpensier Arbevel in a different vehicle. Two milestones. Same reason behind both: investors backing a track record, not a pitch deck. That track record has a lot of names attached to it. Our data and risk teams built the models that have kept our default rate under 0.1% since 2020. Our legal and compliance team structured a securitisation structure under French law from the ground up. Our finance team ran the fundraising process end to end, from term sheets to closing. Our revenue team brought on the 70+ B2B platforms now running on Aria, including Malt and Job&Talent, across France and the UK. And every product, engineering and ops person in between kept it all running, processing 1.7 million invoice advances in 2025 alone, and already 1.1 million more this year. That's the work behind today's news. It's also what this capital goes toward: strengthening every one of those teams, investing further in AI and passing a lower cost of financing straight through to the businesses we serve. The money's new. The team that earned it isn't.

Since processing our first invoice in 2020, we’ve now facilitated over €1.5bn in financing across more than 70 of Europe’s largest B2B marketplaces and freelance platforms. Read our profile on Business Age's frontpage for an insight into how we got there and how we’re chipping away at the trillions sitting in unpaid invoices across the UK and Europe that businesses are still waiting on.

Aria is #27 on the Sifted 100 France & Benelux's fastest-growing startups, ranked by revenue growth. Up 25 places from last year! Over the past year, the team expanded Aria into new verticals: embedded financing inside ERP and vertical SaaS workflows, and a card product that extends payment terms at the point of purchase. Less visible than a funding round. More meaningful in terms of what Aria can actually do. We also structured our executive team, a deliberate decision to build the leadership layer a company at our stage needs to scale without losing what makes it work. The kind of building that doesn't make headlines in the moment but shows up when it counts. To the 60 people who did it and to our partners: thank you. This is yours. #SiftedLeaderboards #Sifted100

There are delays that show up in the data. And then there are the ones that don't... A company wins a public contract. They deliver. They invoice. And then nothing. Not because payment is pending. Because the invoice was rejected on Chorus Pro. A formatting issue. A missing field. A technicality that resets the payment clock entirely. The delay doesn't exist yet, officially. It starts when the invoice is accepted. And it was just sent back. Meanwhile, that same company's suppliers are still waiting to be paid. Their payment terms are legally enforced: the DGCCRF (French authorities) sanctions late payers. So they pay out. On time. While waiting, invisibly, for the state. Eight of France's largest employer organizations just put this on record: public payment delays are at "alarming levels." More than 120,000 public buyers, many accumulating delays far beyond legal limits. And behind the official numbers, a parallel system: invoice rejections used to delay the payment clock artificially. Delays that, in their words, "escape statistical radars entirely." The problem isn't just that public bodies pay late. It's that the cash flow gap is invisible until it hits. For any business working on public contracts, that gap has to be funded. Not with optimism, with working capital that exists before the invoice is even accepted.

Embedded finance used to set platforms apart. It's becoming the minimum. BCG puts the total addressable market at $185bn. Platforms that don't offer their users a way to manage payment terms are going to lose ground to those that do. Tom Lamb, our head of UK, is in Fintechly this week discussing late payments, the infrastructure gap legislation can't close, and why invoice financing's reputation problem is fading fast.

"Even though the new legislation will give businesses legal backing... no law can make a supplier feel comfortable chasing their biggest client." Our Head of UK, Tom Lamb, shared his insights with Simply Business on why the Commercial Payments Bill, which seeks to tackle late and poor payment practices, won't fix what's become a cultural problem. His advice? Don't wait for the law to save you. The best defence is preparation, agreeing payment terms upfront, price delays into quotes, or request deposits. Link to Tom's insights in comment 👇