Pennylane, Qonto, Agicap, Pleo and Mollie have one thing in common. All use Shift in one way or another to manage integrations with other services. And this relatively new Belgium-based startup just raised a seed round of 2.3 million euros ($2.5 million at today’s exchange rate).
Many fintech startups rely on integrations to make their product work with their customers’ financial stack. They often end up creating countless partner connections and integrations to keep financial information consistent across products. As their integration ecosystem grows, they sometimes rely on an iPaaS (integration platform as a service) provider.
Chift essentially acts as a third-party integration specialist. It works kind of like Codat in the UK and Merge in the US Instead of creating one-to-one connections, Chift offers a set of unified APIs that are compatible with the most popular financial tools out there.
For example, Chift has developed an accounting API that is compatible with French accounting software from Sage, Cegid and Pennylane. The company has also developed integrations around invoicing tools, e-commerce platforms and point-of-sale software.
Chift decided to focus on financial tools first. “We integrate with tools that generate financial data,” co-founder and CEO Gauthier Henroz told TechCrunch.
Unlike other industries, the fintech market is still relatively fragmented — each European country has its own accounting or billing platforms. But it can be useful to access financial data from any SaaS product.
As more companies start relying on Chift, the startup may add more links. All Chift customers can take advantage of these new integrations. As an added benefit to Chift, it creates a barrier to entry for newcomers.
“In Europe, that’s where all the complexity is. Things will be different in each country, particularly for accounting, point-of-sale and billing tools,” Henroz said.
“We help our customers, who then increase sales or open new markets. There’s very little disruption because you’re embedded, you’re connected, you’re connecting them to others and creating new opportunities for them,” he added later in the conversation.
Developing an integration is also not an isolated project. Companies issue updates to their APIs, which can lead to failures. Chift is responsible for maintaining these integrations. SaaS companies can focus on their core product instead of these integrations.
Investors in the seed round include; Escort (Pieterjan Bouten fund), Shapers (Philippe Teixeira da Mota fund), Seeder Fund and several business angels. “Our goal is to become the leader of Europe,” Henroz said.
