Prioritizing Its Core Users, Paper.id Achieves 30x Growth and Secures Series B Fundraising

Nadiyah Rahmalia

June 14, 2024

Paper.id, Indonesia’s business and invoicing platform, recorded a remarkable achievement in 2023 by growing its annual TPV (Transaction Processed Value) by more than 30 times compared to 2021. Reflecting its promising growth trajectory, Paper.id announced today that it has completed its Series B fundraising, led by Square Peg, with participation from SMBC Asia Rising Fund and existing investor, Argor Capital.

Founded in 2017, Paper.id focuses on helping Indonesian businesses manage their accounts receivable and accounts payable through its invoicing and payment platform. The platform enables easy invoice creation, automatic reconciliation, and precise document matching. It also opens access to various payment methods, including credit card payments, offering extended terms for payers. To date, Paper.id has served over 600,000 SMEs across various sectors in Indonesia.

Focusing on Indonesia’s rapidly growing SME sector—which comprises over 60 million businesses and contributes significantly to the country’s GDP—Paper.id is poised to become a leading player in the region for serving SME’s invoicing, payment, and business cash flow needs.

With its latest fundraising round, Paper.id plans to enhance and expand its solutions, positioning itself as the go-to platform for business owners to manage and process their transactions efficiently.

“For business owners, growing a business is a challenging journey, and managing business payments is one of the most significant obstacles,” Yosia Sugialam, CEO and Co-Founder of Paper.id stated. “Every month, businesses may handle tens, hundreds, or even thousands of payments. Imagine manually managing the entire process: recording sales orders, creating invoices, and processing payments. This would consume countless hours and substantial manpower,” he added.

“Currently, we are integrating automation, be it in the form of machine learning or artificial intelligence (AI), into our B2B Payment process to enhance efficiency further,” stated Yosia. He continued, “We are also looking to make our solutions more comprehensive by enabling cross-border payments, complemented by robust business verification capabilities.”

As a case in point, PT Global Jet Cargo, known as J&T Cargo, is an international logistics company that embraces innovation and technology; with 99% delivery coverage in Indonesia, it maintains its status as one of the nation’s leading logistics companies. J&T Cargo entrusts Paper.id to help them manage more than 5,000 invoices monthly. With Paper.id’s e-materai capability, their invoicing process time was shortened to only 15 minutes now and invoicing costs were reduced by 80%.

Tunas Jaya Manggala, an F&B and packaging company specializing in egg distribution and packaging, has used Paper.id for over four years. Transitioning from Microsoft Excel to Paper.id, the company now uses almost all invoicing and digital payment features. With Paper.id, all processes—from sales and purchase orders to financial reports and profit and loss statements—happen in one application. Creating invoices based on PO forms is up to 80% faster, and digital invoices save the company 90% of costs compared to traditional methods, which require printing, shipping, and employee billing costs.

Additionally, digital payments through Paper.id allow both buyers and Tunas Jaya Manggala to pay business bills using credit cards, extending payment terms with affordable transaction fees. This capability helps the company maintain positive cash flow.

Square Peg Partner, Tushar Roy said, “We are excited to join the Paper.id team on its journey to transform how businesses manage accounts, invoicing, and payments in the region. We’re looking forward to backing Yosia and the Paper.id team as they continue to digitize and transform the large and economically important SME sector in Southeast Asia.”

In its commitment to providing comprehensive business invoicing and payment solutions, Paper.id continuously fosters collaborative efforts with key stakeholders within the Indonesian payment ecosystem. The recent fundraising round, featuring participation from SMBC Asia Rising Fund, a corporate venture capital co-founded by the Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation and Incubate Fund, signals a promising potential for groundbreaking collaborations to deliver exceptional value for both parties’ users.

Keiji Matsunaga, General Manager of Digital Strategy Department, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation said, “We are excited to contribute to the growth and acceleration of digital business in the Asia Pacific region via this collaboration with Paper.id, which will seek to propel the digital supply chain forward, focusing on smoothing transactions between SMEs and large corporations by digitizing the invoicing process and enhancing the flexibility of payment options.”

Argor Partner, Siddharth Pisharody said, “Since our initial investment in Paper.id in 2022, we continue to be impressed by the company’s ability to rapidly acquire new customers, develop strong ecosystem partnerships with banks & payment networks, and build the best-in-class integrated invoicing, payments and financing product. We recognized Paper.id’s unique approach to solving pain points in Indonesia’s B2B Fintech Sector and are very excited for the next phase of the company’s growth.”