Certify, the Portland-based pioneer in cloud-based expense management software, announced this morning that it has acquired Emburse, a San Francisco-based startup that provides corporate payment options for business expenses.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Emburse offers a range of corporate card solutions that allow organizations to easily enforce travel and expense policies, while providing employees and job candidates a simple way to make purchases.
“The acquisition of Emburse demonstrates our continued commitment to bringing valuable innovation that benefits our customers, their employees, and prospective employees, across our brands,” Nord Samuelson, president of Certify, said in a statement.
The Emburse acquisition continues an aggressive M&A strategy that Certify has executed on since it was acquired by K1 Investment Management, a Los Angeles-based private equity firm, in the summer of 2017 for $100 million. In early March, Certify announced that K1 had also acquired a majority ownership of Chrome River, a California-based provider of enterprise-level software, and would be merging the two entities to create a company worth more than $1 billion. That news was preceded by Certify’s acquisition in September 2018 of a Spanish company called Captio; a July 2018 acquisition of Abacus, a New York-based startup that provides a platform for real-time corporate expense reporting and reimbursement; and the purchase in the fall of 2017 of an online travel-booking technology platform from nuTravel.
The M&A activity is part of Certify’s strategy to go head-to-head with Concur, the largest enterprise-level expense-management software company, which is owned by SAP SE, Bob Neveu, the co-founder of Certify who now serves as the Group CEO for Certify/Chrome River, previously told Maine Startups Insider.
Between Certify and Chrome River, which are not yet fully integrated, the companies have more than 11,000 combined customers across more than 100 countries and market themselves as the largest “independent” company offering travel, expense and payment solutions to businesses of all sizes.
Bob Neveu and his brother Alan founded Certify in Portland in 2008 to offer cloud-based expense management software. It was the first company in the space to offer users the ability to capture receipts with the camera on their Blackberries or Smartphones.
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