Before he launched one of fintech’s most quietly disruptive platforms, Ariel Blum was playing late-night DJ sets and watching money trickle in days(or weeks)after the gig. “The money always came in slower than it went out,” he says. “I kept hearing things like, ‘I paid you on PayPal,’ and I’d think, cool…where is it?”
That friction, between when revenue is earned and when it can actually be used, stuck with him. And after stints leading product and business development at American Express, Green Dot, and Melio, Blum finally had the answer: Receive, a fintech company that turns pending earnings into real-time spending power for small businesses.
Today, Receive is pioneering what Blum calls an Earned Revenue Access model. It’s not lending. It’s not factoring. It’s a third path, built with APIs, data streaming, and first-principle product thinking at its core.
The Mission: Make Revenue Real
Founded in 2022 and recently backed by a $4M seed round, Receive enables merchants to spend money they’ve already earned, immediately. No interest. No credit checks. No delays. Just real-time access to spending power, delivered via embedded fintech infrastructure and a white-labeled Mastercard® offering.
“Our vision is to be behind the scenes,” Blum says. “We don’t want to be the brand. We want to enable our partners to help their customers access revenue in real time.”
The company’s go-to-market reflects that ambition: Receive is powering Titanium Payments’ new Titanium Boost Business Mastercard®, allowing merchants to access pending settlements instantly. They also released a SmartPay Calendar, an autonomous repayment tool that rewards early repayment and gives SMBs cash flow flexibility.
Risk Without a Score
Traditional credit models, Blum argues, are broken. “If you think about it, you get a credit card based on last year’s income,” he says. “But what about this week’s revenue? What about your returns data, seasonality, or sales velocity?”
Receive’s system ingests live data from payment processors and uses proprietary models to assess cash flow and activity in real time. It doesn’t rely on static credit scores or trailing indicators. It looks forward.
“Other systems reinvent the same box,” Blum says. “We wanted to think outside of it.”
Blum is candid about his mission: this isn’t just a business opportunity, it’s personal. His parents were small business owners, and he saw firsthand the stress delayed payments can create. Receive is designed to offer SMBs a better alternative. One that’s fast, fee-free, and fair.
“There’s this belief that you’re either doing well or doing good,” Blum says. “I think there’s room for both.”
Receive makes money on interchange, like major card networks. “If Chase and Capital One can do it, so can we, but with better economics for the business owner.”
Blum credits Melio with giving him the confidence to build something from scratch. After pitching the concept to Melio’s CEO, he got more than encouragement; he got Receive’s first tagline (“Anytime. Anywhere.”)
Building the Mastercard partnership took time, but Blum says the biggest hurdle was personal: “Telling my wife I was leaving a rocket ship startup to go do this.” She’s now his unofficial cofounder and biggest supporter.
Infrastructure at Heart, UX at the Surface
Even though Receive is designed to run in the background, Blum’s team obsesses over UX. “Complexity doesn’t make you smarter,” he says. “We learned that from Melio. The best UX is invisible.”
Whether it’s an Amazon seller or a general contractor, Receive distills product experience down to two universal SMB problems: I’m waiting to get paid, or I need to send money. Receive solves both, simply and elegantly.
One of the biggest misconceptions, Blum says, is that businesses who need faster access to cash are financially struggling. Not true. “Many of our customers are healthy, growing companies,” he says. “They just need liquidity, not loans.”
Studies back this up: nearly half of SMBs doing over $1M in revenue pick their financial partners based on liquidity features, not rewards or interest rates.
Blum sees the next wave of SMB finance looking a lot like consumer fintech, but smarter. “We need systems that learn your behavior, see your rent is due, and optimize your cash flow in real time,” he says.
He believes capital as a service will merge with personalized treasury management, forming a hybrid model that serves growth-stage businesses better than static financial products ever could.
