What happened: Accountable is a freelancer-focused accounting tool that operates predominantly in the Belgian and German markets. Via a mobile or web app, users can write and send invoices to their clients, manage their expenses, and get support in answering various tax-related questions - either via an AI-powered chatbot or by connecting to an actual tax advisor. Last week, the company announced the launch of its own embedded banking offering in Germany (LinkedIn announcement).
My comment: I am an Accountable user and have beta-tested the embedded banking product for the past few weeks. Accountable has partnered with French banking-as-a-service provider Swan, and the offering consists of a German IBAN and a debit card (virtual and physical). It is a pretty basic banking offering, you could say.
What is unique and nicely tailored for a freelancer-focused banking use case is that I have two separate IBAN accounts: one primary account and the second one is the tax reserve account. It is one of the biggest traps for freelancers to spend money that is in their bank account but technically does not belong to them (e.g., income tax or VAT). Accountable helps users recognize how much of their bank account balance needs to be transferred to the financial authority at a later point and moves this to the tax reserve account.
Previously, I used a Wise bank account for my freelance activities and connected it to the Accountable app via open banking. The tax calculation features are identical for an open banking connected account and Accountable’s embedded banking offering. But there are some reasons why the embedded solution might become the more popular choice:
- Faster sync between invoicing and banking
- No need to re-connect the external account after 180 days
- Accountable’s incentives for some users to switch (2% cashback)
- It is the easiest choice if you don’t have a separate bank account for your freelancer activities yet
- Perhaps the launch of new features specifically for Accountable’s embedded banking users (?)
