Pennylane: Turning cards into a growth engine with a three-tiered offering

When a software platform adds cards, it’s tempting to treat them as a checkbox: issue a physical card, set some limits, enable payments. But for Pennylane, cards are part of a broader ambition: make the Pro Account feel like a primary financial hub, and capture more of SMBs real business spend.

That ambition started before the launch of their tiered card offering. Pennylane had already embedded business accounts into its software with Swan, with a complete set of card features from day one, making accounts and payments a native part of the accounting experience.

Over time, a structural problem became hard to ignore. Pennylane’s card already had strong usage in these segments, but it still struggled to fully meet the needs behind international SaaS spend, frequent travel, and higher-stakes purchases, where trust and protection drive which card gets used.

That’s not just a product gap. It’s a growth constraint: if your card isn’t trusted for high-value moments, it becomes a backup. Usage stays low, high-value spend sits elsewhere, and monetization is limited to a narrow baseline.

So Pennylane made a deliberate shift. Instead of offering one card for everyone, they introduced a tiered ladder designed around real spending needs, and built to compete with market-standard expectations.

The “why” behind tiered cards: Trust is what drives usage

Premium cards at Pennylane weren’t driven by a desire to add “nice-to-have” perks. They were triggered by repeated customer demand, and by a clear competitive reality: for SMBs and finance teams, “professional cards” increasingly come with two expectations.

First, insurance. Not as an add-on, but as part of the baseline definition of a professional card, especially for travel disruption, fraud, and high-stakes spend.

Second, competitive FX fees. With high FX fees on every transaction, recurring USD SaaS and non-Euro travel spend becomes a visible, monthly cost line, and an easy reason to route international transactions to a competitor card.

Pennylane needed the right infrastructure to properly launch cards that matched these expectations. The turning point was when customer demand and market standards converged: premium couldn’t be “a bolt-on”. It needed to be a coherent value tiering that customers understand, and that the partner can monetize.

What Pennylane built with Swan: A clear card value ladder

Pennylane launched a three-tier structure (Go, Plus and Max) to reflect the realities of SMBs:

• Teams can match cards benefits to needs, so each employee gets the right level of coverage.
• Some profiles have clear international/travel needs, and are willing to pay when the ROI is obvious.
• A flagship tier is necessary to win top-of-wallet behavior for high-value spend.

Go strengthens the baseline for broad employee rollout with a complete experience and core protections. Plus is the natural step up for teams with regular travel needs, adding built-in insurance and a more premium feel.

At the top end, Max is designed for frequent travelers and high-volume international spenders, often driven by USD SaaS subscriptions, bundling the strongest protection and positioning to win top-of-wallet behavior for higher-value moments. Together, these three tiers let companies mix cards internally, shifting from “one card for everyone” to “the right card for the right spend profile.”

Just as importantly, the ladder enables mixing tiers inside one company.

Embedded insurance: The trust layer that changes behavior

One of Pennylane’s strongest signals was that embedded insurance in cards comes up first in customer conversations.

That’s consistent with how business spending decisions get made. For low-stakes purchases, almost any card works. For high-stakes moments (international travel, expensive purchases, fraud risk), customers choose what feels safest and most complete. If the corporate card doesn’t feel protected, spend moves elsewhere.

Embedded insurance changes that because it removes both the “coverage doubt” at the moment of payment, giving SMBs peace of mind when it comes to business spending, and the operational friction of managing insurance separately.

For Swan, having built-in insurance at the card level is possible thanks to a partnership with Owen, which enables companies like Pennylane to ship protection as a native part of the card experience, not as a separate product users have to find and manage. The user experience is embedded, and SMBs can benefit from coverage across Europe.

In practice, insurance isn’t only a feature; it’s a trust signal. And trust is what turns a card into top-of-wallet.

The early proof points

Right after the rollout, Pennylane noticed signals that directly represent the impact a more complete card offering can have.

• Usage signal: The average spend on Max and Plus cards is currently reported at four times compared to standard cards at this stage.
• Who upgrades first: Premium cards are ordered mostly for “admin” profiles, aligning with the intended target for higher-value usage.
• Conversion dynamic: Moving an existing free base to paid takes time. New cohorts are easier to convert first, an important expectation for any platform moving from free physical cards to tiered monetization.

Pennylane’s thesis is simple: users are ROI-driven, and a meaningful share of the customer base has enough FX + travel + protection needs for the upgrade to be self-evident.

Why Swan: Making tiered cards fast and low-lift

On the execution side, Pennylane highlights two factors that made the project fast and lightweight. First end-customer billing handled by Swan, removing the need to build and operate a billing layer. And lastly, simple implementation, largely mapping Pennylane’s tiers to the correct card product IDs.

More than speed, this setup reduced operational overhead and let Pennylane keep their team focused on adoption drivers. With Swan taking care of the card infrastructure, insurance build-in and billing foundations, Pennylane could invest in the user-facing experience that makes tiering work: clear packaging, upgrade flows, and messaging that ties each tier to an obvious ROI.

This lets Pennylane focus on what matters most for adoption: positioning, packaging, and the customer experience around upgrades.

A card offering built to grow with customers

Pennylane’s premium card launch is a proof point of what business cards are really about: not only features, but a system that helps platforms move from count on them as a growth engine.

By building a clear value tiered offering around embedded insurance and competitive FX fees, Pennylane is validating the model Swan wants to make repeatable.

• Customers pay when premium maps to real pain points.
• Premium increases trust, and trust increases usage.
• And usage unlocks both subscription revenue and higher volume, that translate into MRR and higher interchange revenues.

That’s how cards become top-of-wallet, and how platforms turn card programs into durable growth.

Want to know more about Swan’s new card offering? Learn more here.