Banking Innovation
BANKING INNOVATION
The business account for professionals is ready:
Finom grows in Italy
- In Italy the B2B fintech is the only player offering banking and e-invoicing on the same platform. Plus the highest cashback (up to 3%) on the market
- The banking partner is Solarisbank, which provides online business accounts with Italian IBAN and Visa Business Debit cards. With this move, Solarisbank is expanding for the first time outside of Germany in the B2B segment with local IBANs
- Finom already got more than 15.000 clients in Italy and by the end of 2022 will offer banking services to SMEs too
MILAN - 10/05/2022 - If you run a professional activity, then you are probably already doing or will need to start doing e-invoicing. Also sooner or later you will find yourself having to separate your personal gains from your savings. That is why starting from today Finom is offering a new banking business account for Italian freelancers and professionals, which includes e-invoicing on the same platform. All accounts will have Italian IBAN and VISA business debit cards.
After France and Germany, Italy is now the third big European market, in which the Netherlands-based startup is offering its full all-in-one finance management, e-invoicing and banking platform. The European Banking-as-a-Service platform Solarisbank is enabling this expansion and for the first time is offering local IBANs to business clients outside of Germany.
Finom is not a bank, but something more, because all of our services are designed to maximize the benefit for our clients, in this case freelancers and how they can effectively manage their professional activity and gains.
The company was founded in 2019 and it has been active in Italy with an e-invoicing and business management solution since then. In 2020 Finom has successfully raised €16.8 million in investment, from investors like: Target Global, General Catalyst, Avala Capital, Cogito Capital Partners , Entree Capital, and others.
“In Italy we are the only fintech company to offer banking and e-invoicing in one single platform - explains Antonio la Mura, Head of Business of Finom in Italy - Today we are doubling our efforts in the country, which has always been a key market for us. Here professionals are really the backbone of the national economy, despite being largely underserved by traditional banks. Not only that, but since July this year most flat rate freelancers will be obliged by law to start doing e-invoicing only. With our new release we want to serve this audience at our best. We started as an e-invoicing provider in late 2019 and we already have more than 15.000 clients in Italy, a number that constantly grew in the last year. Our clients are a good mix of freelancers, individual entrepreneurs, and companies. Our new business account for professionals is only the first step: we plan to offer the same banking service to SMEs by the end of this year. Finance management doesn't have to be a major pain point for anyone starting or running their own professional activity. Finom puts together payments, extremely simple invoicing, banking reconciliation and expense categorization, all in one place, to allow users to always keep their finances transparent and just think about how to improve their professional activity or free time”.
Solarisbank is the chosen partner of Finom for the Italian business account and as issuer of the Visa Business Debit cards. This model has been already fruitful in Germany, where Finom launched in October 2020, quickly growing its customer base, and becoming the fastest growing B2B financial services platform in that market.
“We see enormous potential in the digitization of the Italian financial market, especially when it comes to innovations based on Open Banking and Banking-as-a-Service. However, the models serve different purposes. In Open Banking models, non-banks typically use bank's data for their products. In Banking-as-a-Service models, companiesembed financial services directly into their own product offering. Finom leverages the breadth of Solarisbank’s Banking-as-a-Service platform to provide its customers with a cutting-edge digital offering, tailored to their specific needs. We are extremely proud that Finom has chosen us for their international expansion in order to offer Italian IBANs", declares Federico Roesler Franz, General Manager Italy at Solarisbank.
“Italy is a country dominated by micro-businesses, where self-employees are more than 4.5M accounting for 25% of total workforce, therefore they are very important for the economy - says Luca Moroni, Head of Visa Business Solutions Southern Europe - Micro-businesses are playing a vital role in the economic recovery path of Europe and their ability to embrace and integrate digital technologies has never been more important. Visa has launched a series of initiatives, with the aim of supporting the digitization of 8 million businesses in Europe. In this scenario business cards, both physical and virtual, represent an easy and safe tool to digitize processes, simplifying for example reconciliation and VAT recovery”.
The main features of Finom for Italian clients
Finom offers a B2B financial services platform that pulls together accounting, financial management, and banking functions into one mobile-first product. Clients can quickly set up an online account and immediately begin running accounts payable and account receivable, from both the app and the desktop site.
More in details these are the main features Finom is bringing to the Italian market:
- E-invoicing and banking in the same place: in Italy Finom is the only platform that is offering banking and e-invoicing in the same place. Now creating an electronic invoice and reconcile invoices raised with payments received has never been so quick
- Italian IBAN for all business accounts and digital wallets through the partnership with Solarisbank
- Visa debit cards: Physical and virtual cards are both available for our clients. The virtual ones are ready to be used in seconds
- Best business cashback on the market: up to 3% cashback for all expenses
- Online account activation in less than 10 minutes
- Accountant access, who can gather the most relevant info to execute tax declarations
- Digital wallets: easy to set-up, ready to be used in seconds, with national IBAN. Keeping in a wallet the money you will need to pay taxes is a life-changing hack
- Payment reminders: if a client is not paying the bill, Finom’s system will send out automatic reminders to him/her. Also the built-in reconciliation system will match the banking statement and issued invoices in real-time
- Account aggregation and dynamic dashboard: all accounts in one place, even accounts from other banks, with the ability to categorize expenses by type, period, client, etc.. This feature also allows to track current and scheduled cash flow
- Payment initiation: Thanks to our smart invoices powered by Klarna, all clients receiving a digital invoice issued by a Finom user can pay it directly from the invoice page, without having to move in and out their internet banking
More information on Finom: https://finom.it/
Press contacts:
Luca Francescangeli
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About Finom
Finom is an international innovation-driven start-up, currently providing financial services in France, Germany, and Italy. The headquarter is based in Amsterdam (The Netherlands). Finom was founded in 2019 and since then its mission has been to simplify the life of entrepreneurs and freelancers, who are the economic backbone of Europe. Finom is a 100% digital B2B financial service, designed by entrepreneurs and freelancers for the benefit of entrepreneurs and freelancers. It blends together finance management, invoicing, and banking. The start-up raised €16.8 million in investments during 2020. Its main investor is Target Global, an international investment firm headquartered in Berlin. For more information, visit finom.it
About Solarisbank
Solarisbank and Contis provide Europe's leading Banking-as-a-Service platform. We enable other businesses to offer their own financial services both rapidly and compliantly in the EEA and UK. Via APIs, our partners can integrate modular financial services directly into their own product offering. Our services cover fiat and crypto assets, lending as well as payments, card issuing and processing. In 2021, we opened up branches in France, Italy, and Spain to offer local IBANs, providing access to local financial ecosystems in Europe’s largest markets. Headquartered in Berlin and London, our group now boasts over 700 employees at eight locations in Europe and in India. Combined net revenues in 2021 amounted to around EUR 100 million, representing over 90 percent year-on-year growth.