Personio has acquired Circula, the Berlin-based spend management platform, for an undisclosed price. Circula will continue as "Circula by Personio"; its team joins Personio, and it will remain available as a standalone product for companies that do not use Personio. Personio is the Munich-based HR and payroll platform, with 16,000 customers employing 1.6 million people. Circula, founded in 2017, covers expenses, corporate cards and tax-optimised benefits for 250,000 users at more than 3,000 European mid-market companies. More than 500 companies already use both products through the existing integration.
Circula is reportedly Personio's largest acquisition to date. I find it quite interesting that the biggest acquisition is a software company that relies heavily on financial services, and not a pure HR tool. Hanno Renner, Personio's CEO and co-founder, puts it simply: "Spend management is one of the capabilities our customers ask us for most."
From payroll to every euro an employee spends
Personio started as HR software and today covers HR, recruiting and payroll. Payroll was where the HR software provider first moved closer to money. Since 2023, Personio Payroll lets companies run their full monthly payroll in its software, directly linked to its other HR services. With Circula, Personio adds the other direction: the money employees spend on behalf of the company and get back. Renner wants Personio to be "the system European businesses run their entire workforce on", and he already lists cards next to salary, expenses and benefits.
If Personio places the Circula card offering well within its customer base and achieves a strong rollout, it could become a role model for Embedded Banking in Europe. Today the card is an expense tool. Inside Personio, it could become the payment instrument for much more: benefits, per diems, reimbursements, maybe even parts of what payroll pays out today. Once a platform knows who an employee is, what they are entitled to and which cost centre they belong to, a card is the obvious way to put money in their hands.
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Circula's card, issued by Pliant
Circula started as a pure software solution, without a card. The card, a Visa corporate credit card, was added in October 2021, when it announced its partnership with Pliant. Pliant is a Berlin-based corporate expense provider that issues cards through its Finnish e-money institution. Pliant competes directly with companies such as Moss (Germany), Ramp and Brex (both US) for its direct products. However, it also offers a cards-as-a-service solution, partnering with software providers (e.g., Mobilexpense and Candis) and banks (e.g., Commerzbank).
According to Pliant, around 25% of Circula's customers use the card, which accounts for roughly 10% of Circula's revenue. Nikolai Skatchkov, Circula's CEO and co-founder, said the card helps Circula close deals it otherwise would not have won.
For Pliant, this deal seems like a dream come true. I am pretty sure Circula was also evaluating competitors to Pliant's cards-as-a-service product (i.e., the common banking-as-a-service providers) in 2021; however, back then Circula was likely not the most contested deal in the market. Now Pliant is in a perfect position to become the card provider of choice for a European unicorn with a much larger customer base. If Personio were looking for a card provider today, the deal would be super competitive and much harder to win. Pliant's job now is to prove itself: if the card becomes part of Personio's wider product, Pliant can show what its cards-as-a-service offering can do at a much bigger scale.
