Fort Collins’ BillGo raises $60M, plans marketing push to banks

FORT COLLINS — BillGo Inc. is preparing for a major marketing effort in the coming months after it raised almost $60 million in its latest venture-capital round.

The Fort Collins company raised $41.68 million out of its almost $60 million from 14 investors, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Tuesday.

In an interview with BizWest, CEO Dan Holt said the remaining $18 million in the round has been offered by large financial institutions that are expected to purchase equity stakes in the company in the future as they integrate BillGo’s software in their own systems.

The haul is more than double the company’s previously disclosed venture-capital total of $19.1 million from two previous rounds.

BillGo develops software apps to help customers make bill payments with real-time delivery of funds instead of potentially having to wait days for a check or payment to clear with a bank, and to convert paper checks into electronic payments. The goal is to help customers avoid late fees or potential shutoffs to services if a payment doesn’t clear in time.

“If you pay your bills on time, it’s the number one way to change your access to financial products for loans, interest rates, credit cards,” he said.

Holt said the $60 million in funding is aimed partially at hiring more staffers in its offices in Fort Collins, Ohio and Washington state. The company is also in talks with Colorado officials regarding hiring incentives, he said, noting that Ohio is trying to get the company to hire more in that state.

The company employs about 110 in Fort Collins and 15 to 20 remote workers in Colorado, 25 in its Washington office and about eight in Ohio. Those figures include about 60 hires in the midst of the virus pandemic.

The market for instant peer-to-peer payments is already heavily occupied by apps such as PayPal, Venmo and Zelle and isn’t the target for BillGo.

The other use for the cash is for promoting the company as a potential back-end provider for bill-pay services to more financial institutions.

Holt believes there’s a gap for a quick-pay network from individual customers to companies that take recurring payments, from utilities to streaming services, and BillGo can occupy that space by giving the best digital experience for users when they log into their bank accounts online.

“It’s really getting our name out to those providers in the banks so they know we exist,” he said.

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