Australian Lendtech and SME financier Grapple will acquire the invoice finance portfolio of ASX-listed Spenda for $2 million, continuing the uptake of Grapple’s market leading invoice financing platform.
This acquisition will increase Grapple’s market share and presence in the growing Australian SME invoice financing sector. Before the Spenda portfolio was acquired, the privately owned Grapple reported surging activity going into 2025, financing more than half a billion dollars worth of invoices through its platform since its launch in mid-2021.
Grapple Founder and CEO Stephen T. Dawson (pictured) said, “This is a highly complementary acquisition and strongly enhances our market growth. It brings new geographic and sector presence to the Grapple lending portfolio and platform. We are excited to have Spenda employees join the Grapple team and we look forward to delivering a seamless and enhanced service to our new customers.
“The terms of the deal are such that all parties are incentivised to ensure a smooth transition of Spenda clients to Grapple. We’ve also executed a two year referral agreement for any new customers Spenda send to Grapple.”
Spenda Managing Director Adrian Floate commented, “The sale of the loan book is the first step in the Spenda’s restructuring its balance sheet and releasing capital whilst realizing value through bringing forward future cashflows. With the software now capable and proven in managing financing flows, credit processes, risk management and payment reconciliation, the company can now enable third party lending products to be onboarded on to the platform via revenue sharing agreements as executed with Grapple. Further, the Company has removed the capital constraints associated with being the counterparty to loan / financing related product offerings. We look forward to working with Grapple in growing the invoice finance loan book to the benefit of both parties.”
Separately, Grapple is reporting increased activity on the technology partnership side of the business. Grapple is in advanced discussions with several large lenders as the market recognises Grapple’s digital and real time platform can mitigate risk and significantly decrease the operational burden for admin and clients alike.
“Australian SMEs and lenders are increasingly looking to Grapple for invoice financing solutions and support as this working capital product grows in popularity in Australia. We are confident that Grapple provides the best enterprise-grade platform for invoice financing in the market. We’ve built and stress-tested our highly scalable platform to provide real time reporting that integrates fully with widely used accounting software, credit agencies, PPSR, bank data and much more,” Dawson said.
Grapple is releasing new Invoice Financing AI (Artificial Intelligence) functionality into its platform – Grapple AI – which will provide operational users with advice on technical lending situations, real time cross check of portfolio metrics to the lenders policies, contract and invoice validity and fraud reviews, online credit profiles of clients and bona fide debtors on mass, which will further ease the operational burden and mitigate risk.
The Australian SME business lending market has grown significantly in recent years. A large increase in invoice financing is expected in the years to come, with a recent study setting out how the Asia Pacific invoice finance market will almost triple by 2032.
