As any new company founder will know, getting credit when you need it can be challenging.
You have to deal with banks, investors, lenders and all the baggage that comes with every person who gets involved with your company.
At Jeeves, we know how difficult, time-consuming, and complicated it is to juggle financial fundraising while you’re running and growing a company. We’ve been founders, too. Twice.
But does getting credit have to be so complicated? What if we could make it a little easier…?
Here’s our story of how we made capital accessible across currencies and across borders so you can do what you set out to do: run and grow your business.
Note: Get up to 2% cashback on our business credit cards in your first 90 days. Sign up today and get the Jeeves credit card for free.
We have experience growing a startup.
With our first company, we had a different vendor for corporate cards, one for local payments, and another for cross-border payments. Just to send funds in and out, we needed three to four vendors. Multiply that by two countries and currencies, and reconciling was a nightmare and costly.
As a fast growing company, this was inefficient, laborious, and expensive. We knew we had to do something fast. But no vendors offered all-in-one packages that were also global.
We explored the many problems founders face and realised the current tools don’t fulfil the demand. That’s because there are several issues business owners face when it comes to accessing credit:
Every time you raise money, you give away a little piece of your business until you're left with the smallest piece of the pie.
When investors own more than you, they can vote you out and replace you, just like the Apple board fired Steve Jobs in 1985. That’s why it’s incredibly important to pick the right partners when you first get started.
“If you only own 20% of your company by the time you get to your seed round, that can be a red flag.” - Dileep Thazhmon, Jeeves Co-founder and CEO
CEOs shouldn’t have to make fundraising a full-time job. They should concentrate on scaling their business, like hiring the right talent and creating internal processes. Even when founders find funding, they wind up using their time to manage and update shareholders on profit and forecasts.
“Investors are like a marriage. You’re stuck with both your good and bad investors till the company has to exit. It’s very hard to remove that later on.” - Dileep Thazhmon, Jeeves Co-founder and CEO
Be prepared to answer many specific questions, receive payment in instalments, and wait months before seeing any cash. Expect APRs around 25% or more. Sure, you’re not giving away ownership of your company, but you now have more expenses to pay every month.
When you’re a growing company, a month or two can mean the difference between making your next quarter or not hitting your numbers. If it takes months to access credit, growing a company becomes difficult.
Being able to raise equity fast and finance debt quickly became our core focus. We knew that resolving these two issues would be an absolute game changer for startups.
And so Jeeves was born.
We identified two game-changing tools to solve the equity and debt problem for new companies:
To help other companies avoid the financial bottlenecks we faced in our first company, we needed to make Jeeves work as seamlessly as possible. Instead of partnering with third parties and multiple vendors, we first focused on building the infrastructure.
We spent the first year of Jeeves building and standardising most of the stack. This allowed us to keep control of most of the structure, from digital sign-up and payment processing, to regulation and compliance.
There was only one layer left, which means that every time we offer cards in a new country, we only need to adjust one part: the licensing BIN. We’ve resolved this with a partnership with MastercardⓇ, who provides us with a direct issuing BIN.
We could now roll out Jeeves as a fully functional financial package to empower new companies with credit and cash flow.
Discover how Jeeves fared in 2022 and read, The Jeeves Year in Review (And Our Plans for the Future).
“There is literally no reason to not use Jeeves. Managing expenses is 1000x times easier now and everyone in our company loves using Jeeves - especially our bookkeeper.” - Aaron Paul, CTO, TyltGo
One of the best use cases for credit cards is to help with cash flow.
Let’s say you have to make payroll on Monday. But there isn’t enough cash in the bank because invoices were due to be paid on the following Thursday. You’re stressed because you just hired an incredible engineer and you don’t want to let him down in his first month on the job.
If you go to a bank, it will take a month to transfer the money. A local lender may promise to wire the money, but can you trust them?
If you’re a founder, that story might sound familiar. Managing cash flow and not making payroll will keep you up at night.
But the Jeeves credit card can change all that: you could receive credit approval within minutes and have access to £50k within 24 hours.
We have proof of how empowering Jeeves is because the scenario above is a true story from an actual client of ours. Thanks to the Jeeves credit card, the founder kept his engineer and grew the company.
You can read more about the why behind credit cards in this article: Why Is it Essential to Have a Business Credit Card as a Business?
Our mission is to become the best global payments solution for companies looking to grow. And we’ve started by building the all-in-one business spend platform tailored for your business.
A Jeeves corporate credit card provides everything you need to help you manage your business spend both locally and across borders, along with the cash flow to stay afloat. All for free.
Here are the benefits of using Jeeves:
You don’t need to provide personal guarantees or wait 2 months to get a response from a bank. With Jeeves, you can get approved for a credit card and start spending within days. We just need to see your business is financially healthy.
You’ll also have an easy-to-use platform that allows you to monitor cash flow and spend all on an app.
With the Jeeves credit card, you won’t have to deal with long reconciliation times, expense reimbursements, confusing balance sheets, or lack of credit.
And for any difficulties, Jeeves customer service has you covered.
We don't charge annual card or account fees, APRs, or platform fees. You just need to pay back your credit within 30 days and there’s zero interest.
With fast credit, you’ll be able to invest in other areas of the business so you can scale quickly. You can also use different cards for different spend so business expenditures become easier to track.
Every time you spend with a Jeeves credit card, you’ll also get cashback with higher rates than the competition. Use your card to settle bills, buy materials, and pay employees. You can even use it for your SaaS subscriptions. And if you spend money overseas, you'll get a competitive FX fee and the best daily market exchange rates.
If your account is in good standing, you can ask for additional credit and receive it quickly so you never have to worry about not being able to pay vendors or employees again. And if you pay back your credit earlier than the 30-day period, your credit will automatically reset.
Prepaid debit cards require constant top-ups to make payments. This means you’ll have to forecast how much you’re going to spend each month, which is no easy feat, then manually top it up every time you want to spend more or run into emergency expenses.
With the Jeeves credit card, you can turn this process around.
You can spend as much as needed, then settle all at once by the end of the month. There’ll be no more top ups, cash flow becomes easier to manage, and you’ll have greater access to your own cash for longer periods of time. The Jeeves credit card is an all-around win-win solution.
Related reading: Why We Built a Credit-Backed B2B Payment Solution with Jeeves Pay
Jeeves allows you to issue multiple cards to employees without incremental cost per card or employee so you don’t have to worry about spiralling costs.
In less than a minute, you can set up employee credit and spend limits and change restrictions easily. You can also quickly block and eliminate a card in an emergency and reissue a new one directly from the app.
Are you working with freelancers or agents around the world? You can also issue cards to non-employees!
Discover how Jeeves spend management is great for your finance teams.
With Jeeves, financing your company is no longer time consuming, difficult, or expensive.
Imagine paying your vendors and employees on time. Imagine staying in complete control of your business without compromising your values or time. Imagine growing your business the way you set out to, free from financial constraints.
With Jeeves you won’t have to use your imagination because it will be real.
Ready to scale your business? Then sign up today and get the Jeeves credit card for free.
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