Edison Partners, the growth equity investment firm, announced leading a $9.0 million growth investment in Chicago-based Bento for Business, a provider of financial management solutions for small and midsize businesses. Bento will use the funds to accelerate sales and marketing and continue product innovation of its payments, spend management and business banking platform.

Analysts estimate that employee theft accounts for $3.7 trillion in business losses each year, globally, with fraudulent expense reimbursement and billing schemes among the most common types of theft. Where legacy commercial card, expense and financial management providers provide post-purchase workflow and reimbursement tools, Bento's card-based digital spend management platform enables businesses to proactively manage and control employee spending at the point of sale, prior to purchase. Bento saves its customers substantially more of their total annual spend than traditional expense reports and small business credit cards.

"Today's business banking is failing small and midsized companies. There is a massive long tail market that would prefer to not give their employees a commercial credit line, petty cash and per diems, nor deal with the challenges of non-approved purchases ex post," said Michael Kopelman, General Partner at Edison Partners, who led the investment. "Bento is creating a new, modular treasury management and banking suite for these businesses."

"We're impressed by Bento's growth orientation and discipline for building rock-solid products that deliver bottom-line customer benefit," added Kelly Ford, Partner at Edison Partners. "Bento's customer uptake and financial momentum has been striking." In the last twelve months, the company has tripled revenues and doubled its customer base. Additionally, Bento recently announced a virtual card platform and open API strategy, partnerships with The Brink's Company and payments processor i2c, and recognition as a Startup of the Year from Pay Awards.

"Edison Partners will help us accelerate our go-to-market initiatives and advance the development of our technology platform and category-leading products," said Farhan Ahmad, co-founder and CEO of Bento. "We're excited by today's investment, but even more so by Edison's fintech expertise and operating know-how for the next chapter in our business."

Recognized by LendIt Fintech as Fintech Equity Investor of the Year, Edison Partners has financed and guided more than 200 private companies, including more than 40 Fintech companies. Noteworthy exits include Billtrust, EdgeTrade, FolioDynamix, GAIN Capital, Liberty Tax, OptionsCity and Princeton Financial. Current growth equity investments include: BFS Capital, Clearpool Group, ComplySci, GAN Integrity, MoneyLion, Predata, Scivantage and Solovis.