Payhawk is Bulgaria’s first unicorn

In 2018, Boyko Karadzhov and Hristo Borisov launched their start-up company, Payhawk. Payhawk was originally designed to handle company funds as a payment and expense software company. Only 9 months after launching, they issued their first all-in-one financial software and card. 

The team has grown from two to 17 engineers and now employs three project managers focusing on payments, integrations, product features, and intelligence. As the team grew, the product’s popularity has similarly flourished.  

Payhawk has customers in 30 European countries including Germany, the UK, Spain, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The company offers no international fees in EUR, GBP, and USD. Other currencies will be charged a 1.99% markup.  

According to Payhawk, their product removes 95% of manual data entry, reduces month closing by five days, and the typical monthly savings range from €1,1015 to €20,792.  

When companies create an account with Payhawk, they will receive an international bank account number, and can connect their Payhawk account to their own bank account to load and withdraw funds.  

Companies will then be able to issue company cards to employees with set budgets or approval workflow. This will eliminate company reimbursements. If employees must use cash payments, companies can use their Payhawk balance for reimbursement.  

Bulgaria’s first unicorn-valuation

Kate Clark, from The Information, announced on 14 February that Pawhawk confirmed a post-money valuation of $1 Billion in its series B round of investments. The leading investors are Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sprints Capital, Endeavor Catalyst, HubSpot Ventures, and Jigsaw Venture Capital. 

According to Magdelena Hristova, a technical talent partner at Payhawk, the additional funding which made Payhawk Bulgarian’s first unicorn status company comes only three months after the initial Series B funding in November of 2021 of $115m. 

Hristo Borisov, CEO and founder of Payhawk, said “We always knew that we could build a big company if we addressed a significant problem in a large market. The size of the opportunity still drives our growth and ambition today.”  

“Becoming the first unicorn in Bulgaria is a huge testament to the hard work and resilience of our team over the last three and a half years.  

“We are just at the beginning of our journey, and we cannot wait to continue reinventing how businesses manage their payments.”  

What’s next for Payhawk?

According to Hristova, the additional capital will be used to introduce 60 additional senior software engineers. Additionally, enterprise features are expected to extend to include Oracle Netsuite Integration, subscription management, and budgets.  

Payhawk is also expected to open offices in Amsterdam, Paris, and New York. On top of that, the company wants its employee base to triple by the end of the year as they push marketing for market expansion.

Watch this space.