Blockchain technology got another boost today when PayStand Inc., a business payments technology company, announced it has raised $6 million in a Series A funding.

PayStand intends to use the money to help scale up its account receivable systems and launch a new, free accounts payable product line, which is opening in beta today. Both of the platforms use digital ledger technology, also known as blockchain technology, to allow for cryptographically secure but transparently auditable transactions.

The technology used by PayStand can also be embedded by developers into apps and integrated into business operations in order to receive payments from customers or reconcile accounts with other businesses.

“With technology advanced enough to give us self-driving cars and rockets to Mars, there’s no reason finance should be stuck with paper checks and spreadsheets anymore,” said Jeremy Almond, founder and chief executive of PayStand. “Yet most U.S. business payments still run on manual, pre-internet systems.”

Using the power of PayStand’s blockchain, a company can have all payment data securely tracked and recorded, receivables digitized and processing automated, PayStand said.

Blockchains provide an innate capability of securing transactions and providing a historical audit trail so that all money and accounts can be tracked after the fact. Parties involved in transactions each keep their own private keys to the encrypted data, meaning only they can unlock the underlying information. But at the same time, the data itself is secured in the blockchain in a way that it can be verified by outside auditors.

PayStand payments users can also accept what the company calls “ecash,” which in this case is the cryptocurrency bitcoin. Bitcoin is the world’s most popular blockchain-based currency — launched in 2009, it recently exceeded a market cap of $120 billion — and can be used to make payments across the internet. Merchants using PayStand can send and receive bitcoins for invoices via their own third-party digital money wallets.

Along with the infusion of venture capital, PayStand announced the beta launch of a digital automated accounts service. Dubbed Digital Accounts Payable, or Digital AP, this service aims to automate accounts receivable with the vision to provide efficiency, security and control. Digital AP would speed up accounting department operations by eliminating the need to tediously cut paper checks for payments. The underlying blockchain’s ability to track transactions, accounts received and audit events also could help reduce the chance for critical human errors during the accounting process.

Digital AP is currently in early-access and is free to all beta signups. Developers and businesses interested in joining can learn more at PayStand’s Accounts Payable website.

The company also provides a number of other services that various industries have sought blockchain technology to provide solutions to business problems. These include blockchain notarized certificates, certified payment receipts with digital timestamps, secure and auditable records and payment requests and invoices that can be notarized on the blockchain.

This follows efforts by Microsoft Corp. and Tierion Inc. to build blockchain systems to track certifications and distributed proof of integrity of data. SETL Development Ltd. also developed a blockchain system to track funds by using distributed ledgers to provide recordkeeping audit trails for pan-European funds.

Similarly, Nasdaq, Chain Inc., Stratumn SAS and even IBM Corp. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. have tapped blockchain technology for use in financial technology, securities trading and supply chain tracking.

The company did not provide details on exactly how it implements the blockchain technology. Although currencies such as bitcoin run on publicly visible blockchains secured globally across numerous nodes, many companies run their own private blockchains that can be used in a similar fashion, with the ledger distributed to participating members.

This funding round for PayStand was led by BlueRun Ventures with participation from Cervin Ventures, Serra Ventures, TiE Global and Capital Founders. According to CrunchBase, this brings the total known venture funding for PayStand to approximately $8.3 million, including a $2 million seed round in 2014.

Image: PayStand