Pennylane launches in Germany and brings new dynamism to the accounting market

French fintech Pennylane is officially expanding into Germany and presenting its accounting and financial management platform. The company, which already serves more than 600,000 SMEs and 6,000 tax consultancies in France, now wants to modernize one of the most traditional financial and administrative sectors in Europe.

A new offering for a highly regulated market

Pennylane is an AI-powered all-in-one platform for financial management and accounting. Founded in Paris in 2020, the scale-up connects SMEs and tax consultancies in a shared digital workspace. In addition to automation and real-time data, the solution offers open interfaces, integrated banking, invoicing and reporting.

Germany is considered one of the most complex and at the same time most conservative accounting markets in Europe. By entering the market, Pennylane is positioning itself as a modern software solution that combines financial data, document management, banking, reporting and e-invoicing in a single platform.

The company's aim is to digitize the collaboration between tax consultancies and small and medium-sized enterprises and to make processes usable in real time without separate tools or redundant data exports.

Technology, automation and shared workspaces

The platform was developed in 2020 with the aim of rethinking accounting software from a technological perspective. The focus is on automation, transparency and close collaboration between SMEs and their tax advisors.

Artificial intelligence supports document allocation, data processing and categorization of business transactions, among other things. At the same time, Pennylane offers an open API ecosystem with more than 100 integrations. These include Shopify, HubSpot, Amazon and Power BI. This is intended to ensure seamless data exchange across system boundaries.

German headquarters in Munich

The new German location in Munich will play a central role in the expansion of the market. The expansion will be led by Tobias Janiesch, Managing Director Germany. In the coming year alone, the company plans to create more than 100 new jobs in order to expand product development, customer support and sales in the German market.

Pennylane now has over 900 employees, of which around 400 work in the Tech, Data and Product divisions. With total funding of more than EUR 213 million, the company is now part of the European unicorn landscape.

Pennylane also receives support from international investors. Luciana Lixandru, Partner at Sequoia Capital, emphasizes the importance of the platform for the further development of the accounting market: Pennylane has shown in France how digital tools can improve collaboration between SMEs and tax consultancies. This model should now be transferred to the German market.

Promise of trust for the tax sector

To underline the independence of the company and the integrity of its business model, Pennylane has published the Ten Commitments for the Tax Advisory Profession.

The notarized charter guarantees, among other things:

• No proprietary accounting services,
• no marketing of client data,
• European hosting and ISO 27001-certified security standards,
• responsible use of AI.

In this way, Pennylane wants to make it clear that the platform acts as a partner for tax advisory professions and not as a competitor.

Digitalization as a shared mission

With the launch in Germany, Pennylane wants to relieve the burden on tax consultants and give SMEs more insight into their financial situation. The company is not positioning itself as a disruptor, but as a pioneer of a more digital, networked accounting ecosystem.

The shared workspace is intended to make consulting services more efficient and enable SMEs to benefit from automated processes and real-time data.