Wave, a Canadian firm that specializes in offering cloud-based accounting software for small and medium firms got another round of funding today. NAB’s venture capital arm led this round of funding with A$32 million. Royal Bank of Canada and a few other investment firms were also a part of this funding round.

Wave was founded in 2010 to provide free accounting software for small businesses. Over the last few years, it has grown enormously and now it offers a suite of cloud-based products for a range of different financial activities such as lending, payroll, payments, invoices and receipts.

Currently, this company employs about 130 people and reaches out to more than 2.5 million customers spread across 200 countries.

Specifically, it has more than 25,000 small business customers in Australia and this explains why Australian-based companies like National Australia Bank (NAB) have invested in this company. In this round, NAB and RBC are the main investors and they are joined by companies like Social Capital, CRV, OurCrowd and HarbourVest. A few Canadian companies like IT Venture Fund, Portag3 and OMERS Ventures also participated with their Australian counterparts.

Though the exact split up of investments made by each firm is not known, NAB is one of the highest investors and this gives it an opportunity to appoint an observer to Wave’s Board of Directors. NAB has invested in many such small companies that create a big impact in the economic and social world.

This series of D investment is the eighth round of funding for Wave, and during the previous seven rounds, it has raised US$55.7 million. These levels of funding reflect the stellar performance of Wave. One of the highlights of this company is that it helps small businesses to be more productive and efficient by giving them the tools needed to be successful.

In fact, their invoicing and accounting software is free to use for anyone, but clients have to pay for additional software they need such as payroll, lending and more. In many Asian and African countries, these free tools can be a game changer and it is known to have helped many companies to become successful at what they do.

Such a social impact has garnered the interest of many firms, so it’s no surprise they are making a beeline to invest in Wave.

Wave announced that it will use this round of funding to integrate more financial services into its free software, so it has a greater benefit on small businesses and the people they employ. Such a move is sure to present opportunities for these small businesses to grow and along with, Wave will also grow.

Such accounting software can also change the way banks perform their core functions of risk assessment and credit pricing. Currently, banks use the data stored in the form of financial statements to make these decisions and the existing software systems and operational processes are based on this presumption. Now, with cloud-based accounting software, businesses can use live data which can disrupt the practices followed by the banking industry for decades.

NAB doesn’t seem to mind that though.

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