Zuora, an SaaS startup that offers online services to manage and automate customer subscriptions and payments, has raised $15 million in a second round of funding from Shasta Ventures and Lehman Brothers Venture Partners, Venturebeat reports. The company had previously raised $6.5 million from Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and Benchmark Capital (who also participated in this round), bringing the total of funding to $21.5 million.
When Zuora launched its online billing solution last May, we wrote the company aims to alleviate the need for online businesses to develop their own billing systems, especially to handle recurring payments like those associated with subscriptions.
Its so-called “Z-Billing Platform” that goes live today handles four main billing-related areas: customer accounts and subscriptions, product catalogs, billing operations, and order management. The whole offering is provided a la Salesforce as an on-demand solution. Online businesses just need to configure their Zuora accounts, import data from their old billing systems, and plug in their sites through a set of APIs. Customers who buy items or subscribe to services on their sites will then get handled by Zuora, which tracks orders, invoices and payments.
Zuora launched a new product last month dubbed Z-Payments, which allows customers to also actually pay bills, integration with online payment service PayPal included. Vindicia is another venture-backed startup with a similar solution.
Zuora is led by veterans from WebEx, Salesforce.com, Accenture, DiCarta, Postini and Oracle.