Netherlands-based bookkeeping programme Tellow has partnered with France-based Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) player Swan to allow customers to open accounts and order payment cards from their bookkeeping software suite. Tellow is a bookkeeping software company that integrates accounting, banking, and tax filing from one single platform.

Combining banking and bookkeeping is reportedly an essential step to further automate and simplify bookkeeping and taxation for entrepreneurs, the official press release states. According to the CEO of Tellow, international players have begun moving towards combining banking and bookkeeping, however he believes that it will be the local companies ‘that will win the Dutch market’. What does the partnership entail? At first, Tellow will provide Swan’s European IBANs with the ‘FR’ French prefix and, starting with 2022, the local ‘NL’ IBANs will follow.

The companies state that there will be no difference in functionality or costs in regard to the prefix, for the end user. The press release states that both Tellow and Swan offer real-time transfers within the Eurozone and there is support for SEPA direct debits and payment request links. It seems that users will have similar basic functionalities as traditional banks in the Netherlands.

Tellow says that it can onboard freelancers, entrepreneurs, and small companies. Following the partnership, Tellow will release physical and virtual payment cards that will be issued by Mastercard, with worldwide coverage, and compatible with ApplePay and GooglePay. After finishing compliance checks, users can reportedly have a working payment card on their phones with just a few clicks.

Physical cards can be ordered and will be delivered within three business days, according to the official press release. The two companies stated that they will offer banking services to all companies residing in the Netherlands, including their founders, owners, and teams. There will reportedly be no systematic blockage of certain countries or nationalities.

Ukrainian freelancers and entrepreneurs are encouraged by Tellow to get in touch, as the company shows a will to enable them to start new businesses in The Netherlands. Banking-as-a-Service and more Tellow works with Swan, a European Banking-as-a-Service provider licenced by the ACPR (Bank of France). Founded in 2019, the company has expanded to nine countries with a reported annualised transaction volume of nearly EUR 3 billion.

Tellow is the launching partner in the Netherlands, according to the official press release. Tellow also offers business loans and invoice financing from its own finance entity. With the release of banking services, Tellow will also add credit lines to its own suite of financing products.

Entrepreneurs can apply for a loan and usually do not have to provide additional documentation, as most of the information such as taxes and bank statements has already been collected in the platform. The maximum loan amount will also be increased at the same time as the launch of the banking function, for all financing the maximum is now EUR 150,000 per loan, the press release continues. .