BlackLine has acquired NetNow, an AI-enabled B2B customer onboarding and credit risk management platform, expanding its Invoice-to-Cash offering and adding upstream credit intelligence to its Agentic Financial Operations Platform.
The acquisition extends BlackLine’s capabilities earlier in the customer financial lifecycle, before an invoice is created. NetNow digitizes and automates processes including customer credit applications, trade references, risk assessment, fraud detection and ongoing credit monitoring.
By integrating those functions with BlackLine’s existing receivables technology, the company aims to more closely connect decisions about whether and how much credit to extend to customers with subsequent financial outcomes involving accounts receivable, working capital and cash flow.
Credit management remains highly fragmented at many organizations, with finance teams relying on combinations of paper forms, PDFs, emails, spreadsheets and external data providers to evaluate customers.
NetNow brings those workflows into a single digital credit management platform.
Its customer onboarding and credit application capabilities replace manual processes while centralizing customer information. The system can also aggregate trade references, third-party credit information, banking data and other inputs to help teams evaluate creditworthiness.
AI is used for risk and fraud detection, with the technology designed to identify potential warning signals and support more informed credit decisions.
NetNow also provides continuous portfolio monitoring so credit teams can identify changes in a customer’s risk profile after an initial credit decision has been made.
That ongoing visibility is important because customer financial conditions can change over time, meaning a risk assessment made during initial onboarding may no longer reflect the customer’s current position.
BlackLine sees the acquisition as a way to connect those continuously changing risk signals with the broader financial processes that follow.
The company said better credit decisions can influence not only potential losses but also revenue, working capital and cash flow.
The transaction also expands BlackLine’s broader Agentic Financial Operations strategy.
BlackLine is developing technology that uses AI to connect and orchestrate finance and accounting processes while maintaining human oversight, transparency and auditability.
Adding NetNow’s customer and credit risk intelligence gives BlackLine another source of information that can be incorporated into those workflows.
The company believes finance organizations will increasingly use AI not simply to automate individual tasks but to coordinate decisions and processes across the Office of the CFO.
Credit represents an important part of that model because it occurs near the beginning of the customer relationship and can influence numerous downstream activities.
For example, determining a customer’s creditworthiness can affect credit limits and payment terms, which can subsequently influence collections activity, working capital requirements and the timing of cash receipts.
Connecting those decisions within a larger financial operations platform could give finance teams greater context when managing the customer lifecycle.
BlackLine’s Invoice-to-Cash portfolio is focused on automating and improving processes involved in turning customer invoices into collected cash.
NetNow expands the platform upstream from receivables management into the processes that determine whether and under what conditions a company should begin extending credit to a customer.
BlackLine said the combination is intended to provide finance teams with more intelligence while preserving the governance required around consequential financial decisions.
The acquisition also reflects the company’s emphasis on applying AI within controlled financial environments.
As artificial intelligence becomes more deeply integrated into accounting and finance operations, BlackLine is positioning its platform around AI systems that combine automation with controls, transparency and human decision-making.
BlackLine’s Agentic Financial Operations Platform is powered by Studio360 and Verity AI and is designed to unify financial data while embedding AI across workflows.
The company serves nearly 4,300 customers across multiple industries.
NetNow CEO Nauman Hafeez said the companies share a view that credit teams need better information and technology for managing customer risk.
Following the acquisition, NetNow’s credit intelligence will become part of the broader BlackLine financial operations ecosystem, creating opportunities to connect information gathered during onboarding and credit evaluation with later-stage finance processes.
Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati and Blake, Cassels & Graydon served as legal advisors to BlackLine.
Lightning Partners served as NetNow’s exclusive financial advisor, while Fasken Martineau DuMoulin served as NetNow’s legal advisor.
KEY QUOTES:
“Credit is one of the earliest and most consequential financial decisions a company makes in the customer relationship, yet the process remains remarkably manual for many organizations. Bringing NetNow into BlackLine and integrating NetNow’s capabilities into our Invoice-to-Cash portfolio gives us an opportunity to connect those decisions with the financial operations that follow, applying greater intelligence across the lifecycle while maintaining the trust, transparency, and control finance requires.”
Andy Lilley, Managing Director, Invoice-to-Cash at BlackLine
“We share a belief that credit teams should have better information, smarter technology, and more efficient ways to manage customer risk. Together with BlackLine, we can connect that intelligence with a much broader financial operations platform and create even greater value for customers.”
Nauman Hafeez, CEO of NetNow
