Payment automation platform Upwell announced Monday it has secured a $6.5 million seed funding round led by Vertical Venture Partners with participation from Plug and Play Ventures, Black Dog Ventures, Neverlift Ventures, Automotive Ventures, and previous investors NVP, SaaS Ventures, Rise of the Rest, Invest Nebraska and Motivate Ventures. The company has raised $10 million since 2023.
“Our mission at Upwell is to modernize and simplify financial operations for logistics companies,
an industry that has historically been underserved by automation. … This funding round validates our approach and allows us to accelerate product development, enhance customer experience, and scale our go-to-market efforts,” said Charley Dehoney, CEO of Upwell, in the release.
The logistics industry is no stranger to financial inefficiencies, particularly in the accounts receivable process. With many freight brokers, trucking companies and logistics service providers struggling with manual payment workflows, the need for automation has never been greater.
The heart of Upwell’s mission is to help transportation providers get paid faster by eliminating bottlenecks in the receivables process. Many shippers enforce strict invoicing processes that often create delays in the payment cycle. Upwell’s AI-driven platform automates the invoice submission and approval workflow, significantly reducing the time it takes logistics companies to receive payments.
“Shippers can make it very difficult to bill them, adding a bunch of requirements. … It creates a major bottleneck for accounts receivable departments at brokers and carriers to submit invoices,” Meg Boaz, vice president of revenue, told FreightWaves.
Boaz highlighted how the platform serves as a centralized hub for managing invoices, payments and related documents. By integrating directly with accounting systems and transportation management systems like McLeod, Sage, QuickBooks and Descartes Aljex, Upwell removes the inefficiencies of switching between multiple platforms.
With access to payment data, Upwell has the opportunity to leverage AI and predictive analytics to provide customers with early alerts on payment risks, empowering brokers and carriers to take proactive measures against potential cash flow disruptions.
Brad Hollister, vice president of strategy and partnerships, further explained to FreightWaves that with the company’s new funding, Upwell aims to build out these capabilities.
“There’s so much more we want to learn and teach customers with their payment data. By monitoring shippers payment trends, we can start getting into predictive payment solutions and notify customers of payment issues. It’s ultimately our oyster to build impressive tools with this data,” said Hollister.
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