Why we invested in NX Technologies?

Article written by Beth Faus

Automotive industry is facing a huge gap between today’s digitized showrooms full of smart, connected vehicles, and the inefficient, manual back-office processes that can cost automotive dealers up to two-thirds of their margin. Payment experience and processes are old-fashioned and inefficient which generates friction, frustration and high time consumption from the vendors, the customers and the finance & accounting functions.

NXT has established a new industry standard for payment management in the automotive sector, with its digital platform bezahl.de, which allows car dealerships and other automotive retail groups to handle the entire receivables process in a simple and straightforward way, significantly shortening the order-to-cash timeframe and minimizing accounting and back-office resources.

The platform offers an improved, modern payment experience for customers of dealerships and other automotive providers, with numerous payment methods and embedded finance solutions. NXT’s expansion opportunities from a fintech angle are massive, and will likely result in a high upside for the company. From Seaya, we are looking forward to bringing our experience in the value of embedding finance at the point of sale, through our investments in Alma and Toqio.

From Seaya’s investments in Wallbox, Clicars, FlexCar and Cafler, we’ve learned that there is a real pressure from OEMs and dealerships towards efficiency and digitalization. Our experience and network in the space over the last years, has proven that bezahl.de’s product and technology is tackling all the right pain points that dealerships and other automotive retail groups are facing. Additionally, as car OEMs are preparing to move towards direct sales and ongoing engagement with their end clients, NXT is well positioned to play a pivotal role in this transition.

Lasse Diener and Ulrich Schmidt encountered the opportunity while launching the first digital payment product for car purchases in 2016. They are a very experienced team in the automotive and payments segment, and have proved their great leadership skills scaling bezahl.de up to more than 70% of the top 100 automotive retail groups and more than 1,000 car dealerships.

We believe that NXT has all the raw ingredients of a fantastic team and product to become the European payments leader in the automotive and dealership industry.

We are happy to announce our investment in NX Technologies, together with PayPal Ventures and Walter Ventures, alongside current investors such as Motive Ventures. We are looking forward to joining Lasse and Ulrich in the journey and supporting NXT in their expansion into new European markets.