Specialist lender QuickFee has completed a capital raising that will allow it to proceed with the development of an interest-free product in partnership with buy now pay later company Splitit.

QuickFee announced on Friday that it has raised A$15 million through an institutional placement. The issue price of 58 cents a share represented a discount of 16.4 per cent to the 15-day volume weighted average price prior to a trading half in September 17.

The company aims to raise an additional $2.5 million through a share purchase plan.

QuickFee, which was launched in Australia in 2009 and in the US in 2016, lends to customers of professional services firms, mainly accounting and law firms.

It provides a form of invoice finance, allowing the firms to set up monthly payment plans for their clients. Clients take out loans with terms of up to 12 months.

The company had gross loan receivables of $37.1 million at June 30.

Its new interest-free product will also be sold through professional services firms. It will allow the client to pay using their credit card and repay in four instalments.

Splitit’s technology will support the transaction, taking the first instalments and “pre-authorising” the remaining instalments.

Splitit has a payment method that allows consumers to use an existing credit card to pay for purchases on an instalment basis, fee and interest free. Transactions do not involve the provision of any new credit.

According to the company’s prospectus: “The Splitit payment platform operates as an intermediate technology layer between a merchant’s platform and its existing payment gateway, being an e-service that runs payment transactions for a merchant.”

QuickFee chief executive Bruce Coombes said in a statement: “The QuickFee interest-free product allows QuickFee to provide payment services to smaller firms that typically fall outside QuickFee’s credit risk framework, and thereby increases our target market in the US and Australia.”