RGV-based Supply Pay secures access to another $100 million

MCALLEN, Texas – The Texas International Produce Association, along with Congressman Vicente Gonzalez and state Rep. Ryan Guillen, recently hosted an event at GR Fresh to push for retention of the Tomato Suspension Agreement.

It should not have been a surprise to find that the luncheon had been paid for Supply Pay, the FinTech company that do invoice factoring for farmers in Latin America.

Supply Pay was founded by serial entrepreneur William Steele of Weslaco. At the event, the Rio Grande Guardian asked Steele if any of the importers present had inquired about his company and if so what their reaction had been.

“There’s been a handful that have come up to me. We strike a conversation. I tell them kind of like my background in the industry, and get on a demo,” Steele said.

“I really am a huge believer that the product should speak for itself. So, in as few words as I can possibly say, I like to get people in front of the product, because I really believe in what our engineering team has built. Our design team has built something that a lot of our customer base is finding very useful in their cross-border operations.”

Steele continued: “If anyone is in cross-border trade, in any sector industry, especially if you’re in fresh produce, we’ll be happy to show you what we’ve built and see if it can help you in your business.”

The Guardian asked Steele how he lays out his pitch in layman’s terms when his product is so highly technical.

“In a couple of sentences (I say), we have built an order orchestration platform that brings together the importer, the customs broker on both sides of the border, the seller and the logistics companies all into one place. No more messy emails, no more long WhatsApp chains and messages. For them to communicate data, documents and information efficiently, so that there are reduced errors at the port at crossings, thus saving everyone involved money and less things to throw away.”

On top of that, Steele said, his company “can provide financing to these transactions and liquidity to this process so that everyone in the supply chain can get paid sooner and it’s less financial burden on their operational working capital.”

When the Guardian met up with Steele a few weeks back he said his goal was to reach as many importers as possible, across the country, in a short amount of time. Asked how that was going, Steele said:

“It’s so far going well. With the small team that we have, we’re really focused on the hot trade zones. So we’re really focused on McAllen, Pharr, Brownsville, the border regions, Laredo, Nogales, Rialto. On top of that, we’ve been having a lot of success working with the different ecosystem builders in Mexico and in the United States.”

“If there’s anyone that’s an ecosystem builder or who wants to help improve the economics of their region or their towns, please feel free to reach out to me. We would love to help your business owners. That’s who our clients are, business owners and operators that want to grow, that want to continue to employ more jobs in their areas and have a huge economic impact. We’re here to support them with the tools necessary for them to grow without having too much growing pain.”

Every time the Guardian catches up with Steele we learn that Supply Pay has either won another award or received another large batch of angel investment funding. This time was no exception.

“Right now one of the exciting things to discuss is that we do have lending partners in some cases that want to enable us access to $10 million and, in another case, $100 million. This is really important, because that access to liquidity for us enables our customers,” Steele said.

“So, if somebody needs a line of credit for $500,000, whereas before we might have only been able to help them with $200,000 or $250,000, now we have tons of firepower and ammunition to really help our clients grow in their peak seasonality.”

On top of that, Steele said, Supply Pay did recently win the 1st Place prize at the pitch competition for Freedom Fest. 

“That was a $15,000 check. We got to pitch to Steve Forbes and to the founders of several different notable companies. But it was really great to meet Mr. Forbes and discuss our issues. He was very concerned with how we’re going to help mitigate certain impacts at the border. But, yeah, it was a pleasure to meet him and share the stage and an honor to win that award at Freedom Fest.

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