EXCLUSIVE- The genesis of Bill.com, a cloud-based cash flow management software for SMBs, came to René Lacerte when he was still leading his digital payroll services company PayCycle.

“Payroll and B2B payments  is a huge painpoint for small and medium sized businesses,” Lacerte told Bank Innovation. “The idea behind creating a Bill.com was to address this pain-point. No one else was doing it.”

Lacerte comes from a family of entrepreneurs. Before Bill.com, he had founded PayCycle. That company, according to Reuters, was purchased by Intuit for $170 million.

For banks, SMEs are increasingly becoming an important audience, as the number of small businesses, independent contractors, and freelancers have been on the rise for over a decade.

So it seemed only logical for Lacerte execute his idea into a business. He formed Bill.com in 2006, with a handful of members. Today with over, 200 employees, Bill.com moves over $52 billion in payments volume annually, he said.

Its customers include four of the top 10 U.S. banks, and most of the top accounting firms. Lacerte could not name his banking clients except for JPMorgan Chase. In fact, last year, JPMorgan Chase along with Temasek Holdings led a $100 million investment round for Bill.com.

Aside from JPMorgan Chase, Bill.com has also recently inked a partnership with business accounting software provider Intuit.

As for goals for this year, Bill.com will continue adding banks and financial institutions to its customer list.

“We continue to add banking customers to our roster,” Lacerte said. “As small businesses increase in number, banks are realizing that simplifying payroll, being able to automate certain cumbersome tasks is a huge advantage they can provide their customers, which is where we come in.”

Lacerte could not disclose any new products or features they are currently working on, he did say that some are in the pipeline.

Based in Palo Alto, California, Bill.com currently has over three million members.