Pleo is a European market leader in the spend management space. The company holds an EMI license and acts as a card issuer, backed by a strong partnership with Mastercard. Its founder-led purpose is to help European businesses thrive, and Pleo has answered it by serving approximately 45,000 customers across 16 European countries.
Fully regulated by the FCA in the UK and the FSA in Denmark, Pleo maintains an end-user NPS of 70+ and a customer NPS of 50+.
Now, the company is taking it to the next level through Embedded, an offering designed to partner with payment service providers and relevant accounting SaaS providers. Through these partnerships, Pleo’s spend management solution can be fully embedded into partner platforms, allowing them to offer spend management capabilities almost immediately, without the immense cost and complexity of building a similar solution in-house.
“Rather than forcing
SMEs to choose an
additional platform,
we offer spend
management in the
platform that they’re
already present in.”Kunal Galav
VP of Pleo Embedded
“What we’ve learned is that SMEs have different systems they work with and are comfortable with, their HR provider, spreadsheets, or their accounting system,” says Kunal Galav, VP of Pleo Embedded. “Rather than forcing those SMEs to choose an additional platform, we want to offer spend management in the platform that they’re already present in.”
Last chance: Get your tickets for Stockholm Fintech Week March 19
What SMEs really need from business finances
Small business owners consider the following four things critical in their business finances, says Kunal:
- Visibility into the company’s spending and expenses
- Visibility into the company’s budget
- Proper management of all payments across all accounts
- The need for granular controls across the organisation
Pleo has built each of these elements into its platform, delivering real-time analytics for company spend. The real-time data provides granular insights such as:
- The number of active users
- How many expenses were created
- What percentage of expenses have receipts attached (and which employees still need to attach receipts)
- Total spend
- Total spend by category
- Total spend by accounting code
- Top spenders (by employee)
Administrators can create budgets directly linked to a user’s cards, enforcing budget rules at the point of spend.
As an EMI license holder, Pleo can also manage financial transfers, allowing users to set up rules that automatically pull funds from an account into specific pockets.
“These are extremely complex financial systems, but the interface makes it simple so that anyone can work with them,” says Kunal.
The platform also supports deep drill-downs into specific vendors, showing graphs of monthly spend, which cards were used, and which employees executed the transactions.
Last chance: Get your tickets for Stockholm Fintech Week March 19
Why embedding spend management makes sense for platforms
Customers today have a plethora of tools to choose from. While many customers may be digitally active, they might not be digitally active on your platform. The simple answer is to embed a solution directly in your platform, making it unnecessary for the customer to go window shopping elsewhere.
Another issue platforms face is that, even though they solve a particular need, they might not address the customer’s primary need. Pleo’s internal data suggests that spend management is a core business need for SMBs and will become a massive growth lever in Europe in the coming years. SMBs are hungry for solutions that allow them to manage employee spending without complexity.
With Pleo, control reaches a fine, granular level, even determining on which days of the week an employee can use a business card and for what categories of transactions.
By providing what customers need, platforms achieve higher retention, higher loyalty, and a richer experience, all of which drive growth.
The build-vs-buy case: Why partners choose to embed
After integrating with Embedded, partners typically see a 60% increase in spend over the first twelve months and over 70% monthly active user rates.
The value proposition is unmistakable, which brings up the classic “build versus buy” question.
Building a comparable solution would take approximately eighteen months at a cost of €4 million, says Kunal, and that estimate doesn’t account for the advanced analytics, insights, and ongoing improvements Embedded provides. Building something outside your core competency often leads to a less-than-ideal result.
There’s also the significant hurdle of financial services regulations, which most software providers lack the experience to overcome easily.
“Software providers aren’t in the business of managing financial services, which entails dealing with risk, safeguarding, and handling complex payment systems. Pleo has a tech DNA and ten years of experience in dealing with financial systems and risk management,” says Kunal. “We’ve simplified the complexity immensely in those ten years.”
Last chance: Get your tickets for Stockholm Fintech Week March 19
How Pleo Embedded works
Embedded operates on a mutual-risk and mutual-benefit basis. The solution is delivered as a partner-branded experience. Customers enjoy a single login to access the full spend management functionality.
Pleo is already integrated with approximately 30 accounting platforms and 20 HR platforms across Europe.
The primary verticals Embedded is targeting currently are:
Accounting platforms
Customers spend immense time on these daily hubs, making them ideal for a solution like Embedded to integrate with.
Payment service providers (PSPs)
PSPs handle the receiving end of fintech well, but often need partners for the management side. Embedded enables PSPs to offer services such as cash flow prediction, spend categorisation, and analytics.
Pleo has spent a decade simplifying spend for European businesses. Pleo Embedded extends that simplicity into the platforms that businesses already trust.
“We’re a strongly mission-driven company, and our mission is to help European SMBs thrive. In 2026, we’re focusing on making that happen by helping our partners succeed with Pleo Embedded,” says Kunal.