2025 wrap-up: Closing the financial gap in Europe’s SMB software

The business software SMBs already rely on? It's getting better.

Embedded banking has shifted from experiment to essential. As regulation, technology, and customer expectations align, financial services must now live inside these business softwares SMBs already use.

In 2025, we focused on building infrastructure that scales. The kind that supports 150+ partners across Europe and handles the features their products actually need.

Accounting platforms and HR tools that partnered with Swan grew more than 2x this year across new accounts opened, deposits in accounts and transactions (transfers & cards). Their growth resulted in Swan processing more than €2B per month in payments in 2025.

They’ve turned into financial command centers by transforming what used to be disconnected tasks (paying invoices, checking cash flow, approving expenses) into one smooth experience. Now these tools aren't just tracking financial data... they're platforms where SMBs can actually take action when handling their finances.

Our partners' wins are the main story. Swan's job is to provide the steady, compliant infrastructure they run on, making those wins reliable and secure. It's all about scaling responsibly, without breaking things.

In this article, we break down the milestones reached in 2025 and how they're shaping the SMB software ecosystem.

Compliance continues to be the foundation

Compliance remained the foundation behind every partner launch and feature shipped in 2025. Partners experienced faster go-live timelines and steadier operations, allowing them to focus on their unique product offerings.

In 2025, Swan achieved key certifications and built frameworks that reinforced our foundation:

• DORA readiness: Proactive Information Communication Technologies (ICT) risk management framework with standardised incident reporting, resilience testing, and continuous oversight of 20+ critical vendors to ensure operational resilience.
• ISO/IEC 27001 certification: Independently verified security controls across the technical stack, providing continuous risk management for every API and workflow.

For partners, this means simpler security reviews, faster issue recovery, and built-in resilience that strengthens end-user trust.

External recognition this year underscored foundation of compliance:

• La French Tech 120: Signals steady execution at scale and the resilience partners look for when choosing their embedded banking infrastructure
• Accel's Globalscape 2025: Highlights Swan's role at the centre of a broader software shift where AI, cloud, and embedded banking converge, and real-time, secure data access is a prerequisite for product velocity
• Sifted's B2B SaaS Rising 100: Reflects the shared belief that embedded banking is shaping the future of business in Europe among partners and team

For Swan, certifications and recognitions like these are fuel to keep helping Europe’s top software platforms become financial powerhouses.

2025 launches: Precision in control, compliance, and speed

Shipping great embedded financial products is about adding features and giving platforms precise control over payments. It starts with infrastructure that can handle complexity at scale that’s built for today’s needs and tomorrow’s regulations, so product teams can move quickly without trading off on trust.

Partners shape the product with us, from early discovery to shipping. The technical stack is designed to help teams iterate fast:

• No‑code interfaces in a full‑feature sandbox for testing flows without waiting on builds
• Pre‑built APIs and modular components to slot in accounts, payments, and cards without re‑building
• Shorter build cycles thanks to sensible defaults, consistent docs, and tooling that removes repetitive work

Compliance by default with fast iteration shows up in the features we shipped in 2025:

• Local IBANs for Italy and Belgium: Native experiences build end user trust with local tax payments, direct debits, and everyday transactions. Under the hood, its a consistent foundation in every market: true local IBANs, country‑specific onboarding, and alignment with local regulators.
• Tracked international card shipping with La Poste: Moving from untracked to tracked delivery outside France increases activation, reduces support tickets, and gives end users reliable status updates. A small operational upgrade with outsized impact on conversion.
• Improved merchant onboarding: Partners can request missing data via APIs, collect documents, and progress verification automatically. Time‑to‑activate drops while compliance quality rises, back‑and‑forths decrease, and faster revenue moments.
• Multiple Accounts: With one‑click dedicated accounts and no repeated onboarding, platforms jump from “basic banking” to true financial management. Less friction leads to higher deposits and deeper usage as users structure cash the way they actually run the business. With separate balances and clear reconciliation, accounts specifically for taxes, budgets, payment, or regional operations provide full functionality for making payments and transfers.
• Verification of Payee (VoP): VoP is easy to implement with our flexible APIs, giving partners full control over UX. Partners can integrate it at any step in their flow and test in advance. This solution checks prevent misdirected payments and reduce fraud, meaning fewer disputes and a cleaner ledger for products, plus confidence and error prevention for end users. More detailed insights about Swan’s VoP implementation can be found in this article.
• Ledger depth and fincrime automation: Collecting the right data earlier enables smarter risk detection and smoother later‑stage KYC and monitoring. Platforms get fewer false positives and a better‑paced user journey. Operations gets real signals over meaningless noise.

With these features and updates, platforms get the control they need over payments and compliance, paired with a platform that accelerates delivery. The constant north star is to be precise where it matters, fast where it counts, and ready for what’s next.

2026 readiness: expanding the foundation

In 2026, Swan is committed to collaboration supporting partner growth by expanding the foundation of product offerings. The next wave of features is about reinforcing Swan’s mission of providing a dependable infrastructure that removes friction, tightens control, and opens new revenue paths so product teams can move faster without trading off on trust in their embedded banking partner.

Tap to Pay

In-person card acceptance becomes a native part of the product experience with accepting payments using Tap to Pay. On iOS and Android systems, users can take card payments anywhere, without extra hardware, directly inside the partner’s app. For teams that want to move even faster, a Swan‑branded, open‑source Tap to Pay app provides a quicker go-to-market timeline.

The result is simple: smartphones turn into payment terminals in just a few taps. With use cases for health professionals, independent service providers, and SMBs, retention improves with a fuller payment stack, and revenue grows through physical transaction fees and deeper account balances.

New card packages

As SMBs grow, their financial needs evolve. Swan's three-tier card structure (Standard, Essential, Premium) meets customers where they are and scales with them. Partners activate once, then customers select their tier based on spending, insurance needs, and budget. The upgrade path is automatic: as spending, international activity, or insurance needs grow, the next tier is ready.

Swan manages billing, insurance partnerships, and limits administration burdens, so that partners can offer tiered cards and earn revenue as customers upgrade.

This creates a retention engine. SMBs who need higher limits, better insurance, or lower FX fees can upgrade within their platform. Platforms keep high-value users, attract scaling SMBs, and capture growing economics.

New cards’ features

Card features are getting an upgrade to reflect evolving SMB financial needs, too. Because growing SMBs face a common frustration: their current banking tools can't keep up with their ambitions.

Swan's premium card package changes this dynamic. With spending limits up to €100,000 per month, comprehensive insurance coverage, and reduced or zero FX fees, partners can now retain their highest-value customers who would otherwise churn to access these features elsewhere.

By converting existing users with premium features and attracting SMBs who need higher insurance and spending limits, partners unlock additional revenue with premium subscriptions, revenue sharing, and increased interchange.

Re-KYC (Know Your Customer), built for partners

Re‑KYC is a partner‑branded portal that turns periodic KYC reviews into a guided, low‑friction flow for account holders. Users simply review their information, declare changes, and upload any updated documents. The operational impact compounds quickly, and time to first response drops because requests are clear and actionable.

This feature is relevant to all partners who run periodic KYC, and it’s especially powerful at scale: when there’s large volumes of account holders to re‑verify, the combination of a customer‑friendly portal and analyst‑ready tooling delivers measurable gains in speed, compliance confidence, and customer trust.

Account onboarding enhancement

Account onboarding enhancement introduces an enhanced API that helps partners collect smarter data upfront, strengthen compliance, and make better risk decisions from day one. While integrating the new fields requires some thoughtful work on the partner side, the payoff is meaningful: fewer surprises down the road, less manual intervention, and a smoother experience for users.

Security and compliance start at onboarding: ~25 new compliance fields (including US UBO support) enable granular risk assessment, smarter decisions, and automated fraud detection. Benefits include fewer support tickets, less KYC back-and-forth, clearer audit trails, and faster decisions. The rationalized object model separates companies, UBOs, and representatives with backward-compatible changes, plus SIREN registry lookup for French companies reduces manual data entry.

Not zero-effort, but a manageable and worthwhile enhancement. Platforms building on a foundation that simplifies compliance, streamlines operations, and sharpens risk decisions.

Built for what comes next

In 2025, the foundation was solidified to make everything else possible: reliability, compliance, operational excellence, and European expansion. And that foundation matters when looking to 2026.

Every effort was about giving our partners the tools they need to scale, without compromising the trust between Swan and our partners, or between our partners and their end users.

In 2026, this foundation of trust will only continue to grow. Partners enter the new year with dependable rails, cleaner compliance, and the confidence to expand into new features, new markets, and new revenue, all without any slowdowns.

That's the Swan difference: not just launching embedded financial features, but running alongside our partners to bring discipline at scale.

We're ready for what's next, and so are they.

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