e-conomic Adds Cards, Bolt Food Launches Lending, Mews Expands Financing

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Danish digital accounting provider e-conomic has announced that it’s launching an embedded card offering by the end of the year. The company will leverage the card-as-a-service offering from Swedish expense management provider Mynt (Mynt).

e-conomic is the most popular digital accounting tool in Denmark, covering more than half of the local market. The company is an early member of the Visma Group and was already acquired in 2015. As a frequent reader, you will know that Visma has been developing digital accounting providers and adjacent businesses all over Europe over the past years. And Embedded Finance, especially Embedded Banking, has been a hot topic for many of Visma’s ventures.

Therefore, it’s no surprise that e-conomic makes a similar move. Mynt, on the other hand, has been gearing up on its partnership side, most notably its Nordea deal, which we covered some weeks ago. Unlike pure banking-as-a-service providers, Mynt not only offer card integration but also other spend management features. Additionally, Mynt can offer not only debit cards but credit cards as well.

Bolt Food, the food delivery unit of transportation company Bolt, has partnered with finmid to launch an Embedded Lending offering. Bolt Food Finance, the name of the offering, offers restaurants and small businesses flexible funding via its software platform (finmid).

Initially, the service is launched in Latvia with plans for European expansion. The program allows pre-approved partners to access loans of up to €30,000 (or €200,000 on request) within 24 hours through a streamlined online process.

The financing includes a revenue-based repayment model where restaurants pay back a fixed percentage of their monthly Bolt Food platform revenue, rather than fixed payments. The funds can be used for various business needs, including equipment, renovations, hiring, or marketing.

Two things stood out for me. Firstly, for once, a company is calling their embedded lending offering “Finance” and not “Capital”. Secondly, and on a more serious note, finmid seems to be pretty focused and successful in the European food delivery ecosystem. Besides Bolt, Wolt (part of DoorDash) and Glovo (part of Delivery Hero) are also partnering with finmid, likely driven by finmid’s broad European coverage, a crucial feature for many of these pan-European platforms.

Hotel-focused SaaS provider Mews has published a new blog post about Hotel Design for the Modern Guest, prominently featuring their "Flexible Financing" solution in partnership with YouLend (Mews). While the financing product isn't new, Mews is clearly re-emphasising its value proposition for hoteliers who want to invest in property improvements but face funding barriers.

The product page (Mews) has a few more details. Hotels can receive financing from £3,000 to £1,000,000 for 3 to 12 months. And if you have noted the currency, the financing product is currently only available for UK-based companies. Since all hotels that use the Mews software solution also use Mews for all payments, offline and online, Mews can collect the repayment from the financing directly from their income.

The lending solution addresses what Mews identifies as a key industry challenge: traditional financing options are often slow and misaligned with the hospitality industry's seasonal, fast-paced nature. Through the YouLend partnership, hotels can access funding for redesigns, space enhancements, or operational upgrades, with repayments that flex with revenue and eligibility based on performance rather than projections.

It might be worth noting that Mews uses both Stripe and Adyen for its payment processing (as far as I know, they started with Stripe). Both these payment giants also offer a financing product. Adyen has already been offering this product in Europe for some time via its Balance platform, and Stripe Capital for platforms was recently announced for a few European markets. So, why did Mews still choose YouLend? There are a lot of pros and cons, but perhaps a specialised lending provider was likely a better fit for Mews and their customers' needs. Additionally, since Mews partners with two payment companies, it would have required a setup with both. As Mews seems to be exploring the demand in the UK only, it was likely the better choice to get started. Will they stick with this setup when the product proves successful? We will see.

This financing product represents a continuation of Mews' broader fintech strategy, as detailed in my podcast with CEO Matt Welle from July 2024 (Podcast). In that interview, Matt discussed how embedded finance had become a larger revenue stream than SaaS for the company, and how they were exploring various financial products, including cash flow lending, to address seasonal challenges hotels face.

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Best wishes from Berlin,

Lars Markull (LinkedIn)