What happened: Even though Juuli is headquartered in London, it targets freelancers in the EEA with an invoicing and payment solution. The startup has extended the offering and partnered with Visa and Stripe to launch a freelancer credit card (The Paypers).
My comment: I haven’t encountered Juuli before, but it seems the company targets freelancers based in the EEA with global clients. The main difference from other invoicing apps is that a freelancer who uses Juuli signs an agreement with Juuli that grants Juuli the right to invoice and collect payments from the freelancer’s clients on their behalf. Therefore, Juuli seems to target individuals who haven’t registered a company or set themselves up as freelancers in their country. Additionally, Juuli offers businesses a payment solution for freelancers they work with directly.
Juuli’s focus on the gig economy and helping companies manage payments to freelancers is an interesting play (even though I don’t fully get the focus on freelancers without a company). The credit card launch is a logical extension of an invoicing product, even though the move from accounts receivable to accounts payable seems relatively early for a startup of the size of Juuli. However, Juuli already uses Stripe for payment collection and launching the Stripe Credit Card for the already onboarded freelancers is likely limited extra integration work. But I do hope it’s not distracting their team from finding the actual product market fit.
