Bill.com Holdings, Inc. (BILL): History, Ownership, Mission, How It Works & Makes Money

When you look at the complex world of small and midsize business (SMB) finance, do you ever wonder how Bill.com Holdings, Inc. (BILL) moved past the paper-based chaos to become a financial operations leader? The company's platform, which automates accounts payable (AP) and accounts receivable (AR), has cemented its market relevance by generating a total revenue of $1,462.6 million in fiscal year 2025, with core revenue (subscription and transaction fees) growing 16% year-over-year to $1.3 billion. By serving nearly 494,000 businesses and leveraging new AI Agents, Bill.com is defintely redefining how millions of SMBs manage their cash flow, so understanding its history, ownership, and dual-stream business model is crucial for any investor or strategist today.

Bill.com Holdings, Inc. (BILL) History

You need to understand the roots of a company like Bill.com Holdings, Inc. (BILL) to grasp its current strategy, especially as it navigates the competitive fintech space. The company's journey began with a clear vision: to kill the paper check and simplify business payments for small and midsize businesses (SMBs).

The evolution from a simple accounts payable (AP) automation tool to a comprehensive financial operations platform, fueled by strategic acquisitions and significant capital raises, is what defines its trajectory up to November 2025. It's a story of focusing on a massive, underserved market-the back-office finance of the American SMB.

Given Company's Founding Timeline

Year established

The company was founded in April 2006, initially incorporated as Cashboard, Inc..

Original location

The original location was Palo Alto, California, the heart of Silicon Valley, before the corporate headquarters moved to San Jose, California, in early 2020.

Founding team members

The founding effort was led by René Lacerte, who brought a wealth of experience, having previously co-founded the online payroll software startup PayCycle.

Initial capital/funding

Early backing came from venture capital, with the initial seed round followed by a Series A funding in 2007 that secured approximately $8.5 million from firms like Emergence Capital Partners and DCM Ventures. The company has since raised a total funding of $326 million across 11 rounds prior to its IPO.

Given Company's Evolution Milestones

Given Company's Transformative Moments

The company's trajectory hasn't been a straight line; it's been defined by a few key, transformative decisions that fundamentally changed its market position and growth profile. These moves were about expanding beyond basic AP automation into a full-stack financial operations platform (FinOps).

• The IPO and Capital Infusion: Going public in December 2019 was the first major step, raising the capital needed to execute a much larger growth strategy. This move gave them the currency for the massive acquisitions that followed.
• The Divvy Acquisition (June 2021): This was the biggest game-changer, costing $2.5 billion. It wasn't just another product; it combined AP and AR with spend and expense management via corporate cards, creating an integrated platform. This immediately expanded the total addressable market (TAM) and increased the platform's value proposition for SMBs.
• The Shift to AI-Powered FinOps: In October 2025, the company launched new AI Agents to power touchless transactions. This strategic pivot towards artificial intelligence is crucial, aiming to automate financial operations further, which is a clear action to maintain category leadership and drive profitability.
• Fiscal Year 2025 Performance: Achieving a total revenue of nearly $1.5 billion for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2025, with core revenue growth of 16% year-over-year, confirmed the success of the integrated platform strategy. The focus on improving profitability, with the operating loss narrowing to $80.6 million, shows a maturing business model.

You can see the full impact of these decisions on the company's financial standing here: Breaking Down Bill.com Holdings, Inc. (BILL) Financial Health: Key Insights for Investors. Honestly, the shift from a single-point solution to an integrated FinOps platform is defintely why they are a market leader today.

Bill.com Holdings, Inc. (BILL) Ownership Structure

Bill.com Holdings, Inc. is a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: BILL), but its ownership is heavily concentrated in institutional hands, which drives the company's governance and strategic direction.

This structure means that while the stock is accessible to individual investors, the vast majority of voting power rests with large funds and firms, so understanding their movements is defintely key to understanding the stock's volatility. If you want a deeper dive into the numbers, you can check out Breaking Down Bill.com Holdings, Inc. (BILL) Financial Health: Key Insights for Investors.

Given Company's Current Status

As of November 2025, Bill.com Holdings, Inc. is a public company listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker symbol BILL. The company's market capitalization is approximately $5.20 billion.

The company is currently navigating a period of strategic review, with unconfirmed reports suggesting it is exploring a potential sale, which has driven stock price volatility. This strategic exploration follows pressure from activist investor Starboard Value LP, which took an 8.5% stake in September 2025 and pushed for operational and governance changes, resulting in a recent board refresh.

Given Company's Ownership Breakdown

The company's ownership is dominated by institutional investors, which is typical for a large-cap technology stock, but the concentration is notably high. Institutional investors and insiders collectively control nearly all of the outstanding shares, which totaled approximately 101.6 million as of August 21, 2025.

Given Company's Leadership

The executive team and Board of Directors are responsible for steering the company through its current strategic challenges and focusing on driving growth and improved profitability. The Board saw a significant refresh in October 2025 as part of a cooperation agreement with activist investor Starboard Value LP.

The key executive leadership team as of November 2025 includes:

• René Lacerte: CEO and Founder. He has been with the company for nearly two decades.
• John Rettig: President and Chief Operating Officer (COO). He previously served as the company's CFO from 2014 to early 2025.
• Rohini Jain: Chief Financial Officer (CFO). She joined the company in August 2025, bringing over 20 years of experience from companies like PayPal and eBay.
• Ken Moss: Chief Technology Officer (CTO).
• Mary Kay Bowman: Executive VP, General Manager of Payments and Financial Services.

The Board of Directors also includes Peter Feld, the Managing Member, Portfolio Manager, and Head of Research at Starboard Value LP, who joined in October 2025, signaling a direct voice for the activist shareholder in governance.

Bill.com Holdings, Inc. (BILL) Mission and Values

Bill.com Holdings, Inc. (BILL) is fundamentally driven to simplify the complex financial lives of small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs), a purpose that goes well beyond its reported fiscal year 2025 total revenue of $1.4626 billion. This core purpose is codified in a mission to make financial operations effortless, which shapes its culture and long-term strategy.

Given Company's Core Purpose

The company's cultural DNA is built around transforming tedious, paper-based back-office work into an automated, efficient process. Honestly, they aim to free up business owners and finance teams so they can focus on growth, not paperwork. This focus is defintely critical, especially when you consider that the platform served 493,800 businesses as of the end of the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2025.

• Humble: Check egos at the door.
• Authentic: Earn and show trust by being real.
• Passionate: Energetically work with purpose and drive.
• Accountable: Duty-bound to each other, customers, and society.
• Fun: Build connections and enjoy time spent together.

Here's the quick math: if the average customer saves 36 business days annually by using the platform, as some reports suggest, that's a massive return on investment in time alone. That kind of value creation is what the core values support.

Official mission statement

The official mission statement is a succinct, clear declaration of the company's value proposition for its network of 8.3 million members as of June 30, 2025. It centers on eliminating friction in business-to-business (B2B) transactions.

• Make it simple to connect and do business.

This statement translates to automating manual transaction processing, which in turn transforms how customers manage cash inflows and outflows. Exploring Bill.com Holdings, Inc. (BILL) Investor Profile: Who's Buying and Why?

Vision statement

The vision statement maps the company's long-term aspiration in the financial technology (fintech) space, positioning it as the indispensable platform for its target market.

• To be the de facto intelligent financial operations platform for SMBs.

This vision means moving beyond simple automation to using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to proactively manage financial workflows, effectively transitioning to a 'do-it-for-you' model. The company's core revenue, which comes from subscription and transaction fees, grew to $1.3008 billion in FY2025, which shows they are executing on this vision by deepening platform usage.

Given Company slogan/tagline

While the company uses several descriptive phrases, the most resonant tagline captures their role as a partner to small and midsize businesses, emphasizing the future-forward nature of their platform.

• Automating the future of finance so businesses can thrive.

This is a powerful statement. It tells you that the company sees itself not just as a software provider, but as a champion of SMBs, aiming to give them the same financial control and efficiency that large enterprises have. The fact that they processed 33 million transactions in Q4 FY2025 alone proves they are a central piece of the financial puzzle for their customers.

Bill.com Holdings, Inc. (BILL) How It Works

Bill.com Holdings, Inc. operates an intelligent financial operations platform that automates and connects the back-office financial workflows-payables, receivables, and spend management-for small and midsize businesses (SMBs) in the US. The platform acts as a central digital hub, moving businesses beyond manual, paper-based processes to a streamlined, control-oriented system for managing and moving money.

Bill.com Holdings, Inc.'s Product/Service Portfolio

Bill.com Holdings, Inc.'s Operational Framework

The company's operation is built on a scalable, cloud-based platform that processes high volumes of transactions with significant automation, driving its core revenue. For the fiscal year 2025, total revenue reached nearly $1,462.6 million, with transaction fees contributing the largest portion at $1,028.7 million, reflecting the high-volume, usage-based model.

The core process revolves around digitizing and automating the entire financial workflow:

• Intelligent Document Processing: AI-powered solutions automatically capture and digitize invoices, increasing bill processing efficiency by up to 80% and eliminating manual data entry.
• Workflow Automation: Bills are routed digitally for multi-step approval, ensuring internal control and compliance before payment is released.
• Payment Execution and Network Effect: Payments are processed through the proprietary network of over 8.3 million members, facilitating faster and more secure electronic payments (ACH, virtual card).
• Seamless Integration: The platform maintains deep, two-way syncs with major accounting software like QuickBooks and Oracle NetSuite, simplifying reconciliation for the nearly 500,000 businesses and 9,000 accounting firms using the platform.

Here's the quick math: the platform processed $86 billion in total payment volume in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025, which shows the scale. You're buying a system that handles the heavy lifting.

Bill.com Holdings, Inc.'s Strategic Advantages

Bill.com Holdings, Inc.'s market success stems from its foundational network effects and its high-margin, hybrid revenue model, which is defintely a compelling combination.

• Powerful Network Effects: The vast network of over 8 million members creates a significant barrier to entry; once a business is on the platform, their suppliers are incentivized to join for faster payments, making the platform stickier for everyone.
• High-Margin Revenue Model: The company benefits from a hybrid model. Subscription fees provide a stable base ($272.1 million in FY2025), but the bulk of the growth and revenue comes from high-margin transaction fees ($1,028.7 million in FY2025) and float revenue ($161.8 million in FY2025). This model delivered a robust gross profit of $1,190.5 million in FY2025.
• AI-Driven Innovation: Continuous investment in artificial intelligence (AI) agents and new capabilities like BILL Procurement and enhanced mid-market solutions keeps the platform ahead of competitors by offering a more comprehensive, single-platform solution for financial operations.
• Deep Accounting Channel Penetration: The platform is deeply embedded with accounting firms, who act as a powerful, low-cost distribution channel, recommending the solution to their SMB clients.

If you want a deeper dive into the ownership structure and market sentiment, you should read Exploring Bill.com Holdings, Inc. (BILL) Investor Profile: Who's Buying and Why?

Bill.com Holdings, Inc. (BILL) How It Makes Money

Bill.com Holdings, Inc. primarily makes money by charging small and midsize businesses (SMBs) for automating their financial operations, essentially acting as the digital backbone for accounts payable, accounts receivable, and spend management. The company operates a high-margin, transaction-driven model where the bulk of revenue comes from payment processing fees, supplemented by recurring subscription fees and interest earned on customer funds.

Bill.com Holdings, Inc.'s Revenue Breakdown

For the fiscal year ended June 30, 2025, Bill.com Holdings, Inc. generated a total revenue of $1,462.6 million, reflecting a 13% increase year-over-year. This revenue is split across three main streams, with core revenue (subscription and transaction fees) growing by 16% to $1,300.8 million.

Transaction Fees, at $1,028.7 million, are the largest and fastest-growing stream, driven by the volume and value of payments processed on the platform. Float Revenue, which is the interest earned on customer funds held before payment, contributed $161.8 million and is highly sensitive to prevailing interest rates. This is a great business model because it scales with customer usage, not just headcount.

Business Economics

The company's business economics are built on a powerful combination of a two-sided network and a usage-based pricing model, which creates strong customer retention and high gross margins. As of the end of fiscal year 2025, the platform served over 493,800 businesses and connected to a network of 8.3 million members.

• Pricing Strategy: Bill.com uses a tiered subscription model for its software, but the real economic engine is the transaction revenue. The company charges per transaction, particularly for faster or non-standard payment methods. For example, a standard ACH payment costs the payor $0.59, and a paper check costs $1.99, while a 'Pay Faster' overnight check costs $24.99, as per the May 2025 fee schedule.
• Network Effect: When a business uses the platform to pay a vendor, that vendor becomes a network member, making it easier and cheaper for other Bill.com customers to pay them in the future. This network effect drives down customer acquisition costs (CAC) over time and makes the service stickier.
• Net Dollar Retention (NDR): The company's NDR was 94% in Q4 2025, meaning existing customers, on average, are nearly maintaining their spend on the platform year-over-year, which is solid, but defintely something to watch for a high-growth SaaS company.

The core of the strategy is to capture more of the total payment volume (TPV), which hit $86 billion in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025. More TPV means more transaction fees and a larger float balance to earn interest on. You can read more about what drives this ecosystem in the Mission Statement, Vision, & Core Values of Bill.com Holdings, Inc. (BILL).

Bill.com Holdings, Inc.'s Financial Performance

The company demonstrates a healthy financial profile characterized by high gross margins and a clear path toward profitability, even while maintaining a high level of investment for growth. This is the quick math you need to see:

• Gross Margin: The GAAP gross profit for FY2025 was $1,190.5 million, translating to a robust gross margin of 81.4%. This high margin reflects the efficiency of delivering a software-based financial service.
• Operating Profitability: The company continues to narrow its GAAP operating loss, which was $80.6 million for FY2025, down significantly from the prior year. More importantly, the non-GAAP operating income for Q4 2025 was a strong $240 million, demonstrating strong underlying operating leverage.
• Customer Scale: The platform processed 33 million transactions in Q4 2025 alone, an 18% jump year-over-year, showing that the existing customer base is deepening its use of the platform.

What this estimate hides is the impact of interest rate volatility on the Float Revenue; a drop in rates would directly pressure that 10% revenue stream. Still, the growth in the core transaction business is a strong counter-lever to that risk. The focus now is on converting that high non-GAAP profitability into consistent GAAP net income.

Bill.com Holdings, Inc. (BILL) Market Position & Future Outlook

Bill.com Holdings, Inc. is a clear leader in the small and midsize business (SMB) financial operations space, strategically positioned for durable growth by expanding its platform and focusing on artificial intelligence (AI) to automate financial workflows.

The company finished its Fiscal Year 2025 (FY2025) with total revenue of over $1.46 billion, demonstrating its scale advantage with approximately 493,800 businesses and a network of 8.3 million members on its platform as of June 30, 2025. This scale, plus the push into mid-market solutions and AI-driven enhancements, sets the stage for continued market penetration, even as macroeconomic uncertainty persists.

Competitive Landscape

While Bill.com Holdings, Inc. is a specialized platform, its true competition spans from integrated accounting software to other dedicated AP/AR automation providers. Here's how the landscape looks in the broader billing and invoicing category, which reflects where most SMBs start their financial workflow.

To be fair, the 0.62% market share for Bill.com Holdings, Inc. is specific to the 'billing-invoicing' category, which is heavily skewed by the massive user bases of QuickBooks and Square Point of Sale. In the niche of dedicated, integrated accounts payable (AP) and spend management automation for the mid-market, direct competitors like Tipalti (focused on global, high-volume AP) and Melio (focused on simple, free-tier SMB payments) offer different value propositions, but Bill.com Holdings, Inc. maintains a strong position with its integrated platform and deep accounting firm partnerships.

Opportunities & Challenges

You need to map the near-term landscape, so here's a look at the opportunities Bill.com Holdings, Inc. is poised to capture and the key risks you should be watching as of November 2025.

Industry Position

Bill.com Holdings, Inc. is a category-defining platform, not just a feature, which is a key differentiator. It's defintely a leader in the financial operations platform space for SMBs.

The company's position is solidified by its dual focus on scale and profitability, reflected in its FY2025 core revenue growth of 16% year-over-year and its $300 million share repurchase program. They are leveraging their large network to cross-sell products, with a reported 40% growth in cross-selling within the spend and expense business.

• Owns the Accountant Channel: Partnerships with over 9,000 accounting firms provide a crucial, sticky distribution channel.
• AI-Powered Efficiency: Targeted investments are focused on using AI to automate tasks like document collection and coding, aiming to simplify the customer experience.
• Integrated Platform Advantage: The combination of Accounts Payable (AP), Accounts Receivable (AR), and Spend & Expense management on a single platform is a major competitive moat against single-solution rivals.

The strategic move to expand platform capabilities, including the launch of the Embed 2.0 platform and new partnerships like Paychex, shows a clear path to capturing a greater share of the massive SMB financial operations market. If you want a deeper dive on who is betting on this strategy, you should check out Exploring Bill.com Holdings, Inc. (BILL) Investor Profile: Who's Buying and Why?