FastPay recently announced that it has placed $100 million in credit with digital media companies.
That’s $100 million used to deal with the common cash flow challenge in the ad business, where it can take 60 days or more to get paid by the advertiser. That can be a problem if, for example, you need to pay the publisher in 30 days. So FastPay provides the funding to help companies deal with those issues. In the company’s words: “We finance the digital ecosystem.”
So the service can be seen as an alternative to one of the other ways that companies deal with cash-flow problems — raising venture capital. In fact, I’ve spoken to two startups who talked about using FastPay instead of raising VC funding.
To fund its operations, FastPay raised $25 million in credit, debt and equity last summer. The company has raised more funding since then, said CEO Jed Simon, but he didn’t offer any specifics.
Simon also pointed out that none of FastPay’s customers have defaulted, so the company seems to be making the right bets. It also started working recently with two new client groups, Facebook Preferred Marketing Developers (including Compass Labs) and YouTube Channels. FastPay is already working with “half a dozen” PMDs, including Compass Labs.
As for where the company goes next, Simon said he wants to integrate with other services, so that media companies will have access to FastPay funding through partner services, rather than having to go exclusively to FastPay itself.