Late payments continue to strain small businesses across Europe, tightening cash flow and turning routine invoices into a source of risk.
Aria embeds invoice financing into the platforms where B2B transactions already happen – from marketplaces to ERP systems – so suppliers can be paid within 24 hours while buyers keep their agreed terms.
In this week’s In Profile, Clément Carrier, co-founder and CEO of Aria, reflects on the personal experience that led him into fintech, the realities of building across fragmented European regulation, and what it takes to scale infrastructure designed around business cash flow.
Tell us more about your company and its purpose
We help platforms and businesses tackle late payments, which cost the UK economy almost £11billion per year and shut down 38 British companies every day. That’s about one closure every 40 minutes, according to government figures.
Our invoice financing API embeds directly into B2B marketplaces, ERP systems, and vertical SaaS platforms. Suppliers get paid in 24 hours, buyers keep their flexible payment terms, and we handle the financing in between. We’ve processed over €1billion in invoices since launching in 2019.
The problem we’re solving is straightforward: most small businesses fail because they run out of cash waiting to get paid. We’re fixing that by ensuring they get paid on time.
What are some of your recent achievements you’d like to highlight?
In October, we were named as one of the fast-growing startups in Europe for the second year running.
In September, Aria won the French finals of the Mastercard for Fintechs competition.
In August, we achieved a company milestone of €1billion in invoices processed over five years. That’s more than 350,000 invoices, helping over 100,000 suppliers get paid faster across Europe, maintaining a default rate below 0.1 per cent and reducing payment delays by an average of 42 days.
These growth metrics promote healthy and stable cash flows of businesses across Europe. When a freelancer or small supplier doesn’t have to wait months for payment, they can pay their bills, invest in equipment, or simply have peace of mind. That’s what we set out to do, and seeing it work at scale across thousands of companies makes the work worthwhile.
How did you get into the fintech industry?
I didn’t set out to be in fintech. I was a data scientist working on economics and machine learning problems at Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations, the French equivalent of the British Business Bank.
Before that, my co-founder Vincent and I were both freelancers. We’d finish projects for major corporations and then wait weeks, sometimes months, to get paid. Experiencing irregular cash flow is stressful, especially when you deliver good work only to immediately worry about paying rent on time.
We knew we weren’t alone in this. The late payment problem affects millions of businesses across Europe. In fact, the latest figures suggest that, on average, European businesses are waiting on total receivables of some €10.5trillion at any given time. That’s what pulled us into fintech. We saw a fixable problem that traditional financial systems weren’t addressing.
What’s the best thing about working in the fintech industry?
The impact is tangible. You’re not optimising ad clicks or building another social platform. You’re helping real businesses survive and, hopefully, thrive. When a supplier is paid instantly rather than waiting for protracted periods, they can pay their own bills, invest in growth, and hire people.
There’s also something compelling about fintech’s combination of finance, technology, and regulation. You need to understand cash flow, build solid infrastructure, and navigate complex compliance frameworks simultaneously. That keeps things interesting.
What frustrates you most about the fintech industry?
The lack of real innovation beneath the surface. Most fintech is still about putting a nice UX on top of old plumbing. You’re abstracting connections with traditional banks, simplifying complex legal tasks, and making things prettier. But very few companies are actually rebuilding the infrastructure.
There’s also a visibility problem. When people think of fintech, they think of card companies or challenger banks. The infrastructure layer is invisible. That’s fine for business and white-label work, but it means the more complex technical problems don’t get the attention or talent they deserve.
The past few years of heavy VC investment created another issue. Many companies were built on unit economics that didn’t make sense. Now those companies are disappearing. The easy money masked fundamental problems that are only becoming obvious now.
European regulatory fragmentation makes everything more complicated, too. We can’t do prospecting in Italy because of banking monopoly rules. In Spain, we need a notary to notify the assignment of receivables. Belgium has mandatory e-invoicing. France won’t have it until late 2026. You’re constantly navigating different frameworks rather than building a single product for Europe.
How have your previous roles influenced your career?
My time at Caisse des Dépôts taught me how to bridge technical expertise with strategy and organisational realities. I ran the Data Lab and managed teams earlier than most people, which forced me to learn communication and negotiation quickly.
The data science background shaped how we built Aria. We’re disciplined about letting numbers guide decisions rather than gut feelings. When we launched, we knew nothing about B2B payments, so we had to learn by testing assumptions and adapting based on the data.
My studies at École Normale Supérieure and ENSAE provided me with a foundation in economics, finance, and machine learning. However, real education came from being a freelancer and experiencing the cash flow problem firsthand. That’s what made me understand the urgency.
What’s the best mistake you’ve ever made?
A mistake we made early on was thinking all business is good business. I remember how we took on too many customers too quickly as part of our “growth-at-all-costs” mindset, which simply wasn’t sustainable.
When you work in a highly complex and competitive market, you have to be very strict about client acceptance to manage risk. There’s a danger accepting every customer that approaches you if you can’t shore up your cash flow management. This destabilising experience taught us that we needed to prioritise sustainable and healthy growth.
What has the future got in store for your company?
We’re focused on becoming the standard infrastructure for B2B invoice financing across Europe. The UK is already a primary market for us, but there’s a significant opportunity in other European countries where the late payment culture is even worse.
We’re also expanding beyond marketplaces into ERP systems and working with larger enterprises. The fundamental problem exists everywhere: businesses must manage cash flow, and the current system doesn’t work efficiently.
We can plug ourselves wherever invoices are handled. Sometimes it’s the ERP, sometimes it’s the Treasury Management System, or any other tools where invoices sit. We see the future of B2B financing as happening as close as possible to where work happens, rather than in Excel spreadsheets or bank accounts, which are far removed from a business’s operational realities.
We’ve got exciting news in the pipeline that we can’t disclose just yet. But the broader vision is to enact a cultural shift in how businesses think about payments: getting paid on time should be the norm, not the exception.
What are the following key talking points or challenges for your industry as a whole?
Late payments will remain central, especially as economic pressures increase. When cash gets tight, payment terms stretch even further, which accelerates business failures.
The challenge here is policy. Europe and the UK need to enforce their late payment regulations properly and harmonise them across borders. Technology can help, but if the incentive structure allows big companies to delay payments without consequences, the problem won’t go away. Governments must lead by example by paying promptly themselves.
Another key talking point is that embedded finance is becoming the norm. Whereas five years ago, embedding financial services into non-financial platforms was novel, it’s now expected. The challenge is execution: doing it well, maintaining compliance, and managing risk appropriately.
Finally, everyone wants to use AI everywhere blindly, but sometimes it doesn’t make sense, like in credit scoring. In B2B credit risk, we need to know two key things: has the buyer accepted to pay, and is the buyer financially sound? For these checks, there’s no point investing in complex AI workflows. Traditional methods work. We use AI for fraud detection, where pattern recognition matters, but credit decisions don’t require that complexity.