Cologne-based NX Technologies has announced the closing of their Series B, led by PayPal Ventures. The company is offering an all-in-one digital payment platform under the brand bezahl.de, with a pure focus on car dealerships and other players in the automotive industry. The company initially launched their accounts receivable product in 2019 and later added a payment solution through a partnership with Adyen.
Car dealerships use the product to manage everything payment-related that is happening in their dealerships, from tracking incoming bank transfers for cars that have been sold to point-of-sale card payments for a car inspection. With the new funding, NX Technologies is planning to expand geographically and add new products.
From an embedded finance point of view, NX Technologies represents the common vertical SaaS approach (even though the company has a stronger fintech footprint than usual). NX Technologies serves only one industry, the automotive sector, and builds back-office services and payment products around them. I guess its no surprise that after the payment-related products, the company is now looking to add financing, insurance, and other embedded finance products to their offering.
But why did I add their story to the non-financial brand section? Well, I see your point. The car dealerships are clearly the ‘non-financial brands', and the various payment and banking partners of NX Technologies are the infrastructure providers. And NX Technologies? I guess you could best describe them as an additional layer in between, taking the services of traditional infrastructure providers and making them consumable for the non-technical car dealership target group.
There are many types of infrastructure providers, and many consume services from each other; however, I still struggle to categorise a company like NX Technologies as a pure infrastructure provider. And there are other companies that I would put in the same bucket. At our last Embedded Finance Review event in October 2023, we had the founder of Austrian startup HiHealth present their solution: a white-label app and debit card for insurance to improve their claim process and customer experience. Hi Health also consumes services from traditional infrastructure providers and makes them accessible for an industry with very specific needs.
So perhaps we are seeing a new rise of vertical-specific providers, making embedded finance more consumable for specific industries? What do you think?
Disclaimer: I am currently working as an interim head of payments at NX Technologies. Check the beginning of this newsletter edition for further details.
