HERO Software has launched HERO Wallet, an embedded payments and reconciliation product for craft businesses in Germany. HERO is a vertical SaaS for the craftsmen sector, founded in 2020 in Hannover, with around 40,000 users across plumbing, sanitary, electrical, roofing, and other trades. The company operates across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, and the typical customer is a small to mid-sized craft business with two to fifty employees.
With HERO Wallet, each customer of a craft business gets their own virtual IBAN(s). Incoming SEPA payments are automatically reconciled against the right invoice, open items are kept current, and the integrated dunning workflow takes over if a payment is late. The whole thing lives inside the HERO software, where the craft business already quotes, manages jobs, and invoices. Deposits are held with Swan, a French licensed e-money institution. HERO Wallet is included in both HERO OS (€119 to €135 per month) and HERO OS Plus (€299 to €345 per month) without an add-on fee.
Why this matters for a craft business
The job a small craft business is trying to get done is to move from quote to paid invoice with as few tools as possible. Most of them use HERO for quoting, scheduling, and invoicing, then switch to a separate banking app, dunning tool, and accounting solution (such as Lexware Office or SevDesk) to manage the cash side. HERO Wallet collapses the cash side back into the same system. The virtual IBAN per end-customer is the key piece of plumbing (🥁) here, because it removes the "match this incoming payment to that invoice" step that small finance teams, often the owner's spouse, can spend hours on every week. There are no transaction fees for incoming SEPA payments, no second login is required, and the existing bank account does not need to be replaced. HERO Wallet sits alongside it and is explicitly described as "not a bank account, but your home for finances inside HERO."
Vertical SaaS embedded finance, German craft edition
HERO is not the first company in this space to have launched such products. In Germany, the closest comparable is ToolTime, which did something structurally similar in the German craft market when it launched ToolTime Pay with Adyen last year (EFR podcast). HERO serves a similar kind of customer (small craft businesses with a handful of employees), has the same workflow ownership (quoting, scheduling, invoicing), and uses payment accounts for accounts receivable and automatic reconciliation.
The international and public role model in the United States is ServiceTitan, the dominant vertical SaaS for home services trades, which has been layering financial services onto its core workflow product for years through ServiceTitan Payments and ServiceTitan Financing (EFR). The German craft market receives less international attention because its customer base is small, German, and offline, but it is one of Europe's larger underserved verticals, with around 570,000 craft businesses in Germany alone. HERO already covers a meaningful share of that market with 40,000 users and is now adding the financial layer on top. The product strategy is consistent across the rest of the stack. The company has been releasing AI features (Voice for call handling, Command for quote generation, Report for site documentation), and the Wallet sits alongside them as the financial component of the same system.
