Sage has announced an embedded banking offering for small businesses, starting in France, but has not published a launch date. Sage is the UK-listed accounting, HR and payroll software provider for small and mid-sized businesses. Its customers will get a business account and a debit card in Sage's software, with payments and reconciliation built in, alongside their existing bank account. Sage chose Adyen as its Banking-as-a-Service provider in France, and the cards run on Mastercard's network.
I expect Adyen to provide both the accounts and the cards via its Dutch bank entity Adyen N.V. However, it could also be two different companies, as it is with Tide. The British business account provider also uses Adyen for its bank account products in Germany and France, but PPS (Edenred Payment Solutions) issues its cards. Tide likely stuck with the partners it already knew from the UK, where it works with PPS for cards and ClearBank for its bank accounts. ClearBank wasn't ready for the EU yet when Tide expanded, so Tide chose Adyen instead but kept cards with its existing partner, PPS. Since Sage has no such history and Adyen offers a card issuing product, I assume Adyen powers both for Sage.
Sage sold Sage Pay, now it builds banking
Sage has history in payments, though, as it once owned its own payments business. Sage Pay, a payment gateway used by more than 50,000 businesses in the UK and Ireland, was sold to Elavon in 2020 for about £232m. When Sage announced the sale, it said payments and banking would stay part of its offering, but delivered through partners from then on.
Also, building banking into its own software is a bit of a change of direction. Since the sale, Sage has mostly moved the other way, with Sage Embedded Services. This unit sells accounting, tax and payroll as white-label APIs to banks and fintech companies. For example, Tide has used it for its accounting tool since 2022, and this year HSBC launched an accounting tool for sole traders and landlords on it. In my piece, I left open whether banks or accounting software are better placed to win small businesses. Seems like Sage is now trying both?
And I think the start in France makes a lot of sense, because the push to e-invoicing is pulling bookkeeping and banking together. Since September 2026, every VAT-registered company in France has to be able to receive e-invoices through an approved platform, and Sage has been one of those platforms since December 2025, built into its software. Once a supplier invoice arrives in Sage, paying it from an account in the same software is the obvious next step.
Building something in embedded finance? Whether you are a brand comparing providers, an enabler working through your go-to-market strategy, or a team trying to fill a crucial (fintech) role, my office hours are a free call to talk it through. I share my honest read and, where it helps, intros to my network.
Why Adyen is only confirmed for France
Working with Adyen in France is a little surprising, though, because Sage's customers will likely get Dutch IBANs rather than French ones, as Tide's customers do with Adyen in France. But then again, Adyen is a regulated bank with a strong technology platform, and I assume Sage preferred working with a bank that offers Banking-as-a-Service directly instead of an e-money institution. Additionally, Adyen is also quite experienced in this space, as it already runs business accounts in France for Tide and is the bank behind Snelstart's embedded banking for Dutch bookkeeping customers, which likely helps.
Still, in its press release, Sage only confirms Adyen for France, and the company expects its approach and its providers to vary by market as it takes the service across Europe. Going market by market makes sense, but I expect Adyen to be the preferred partner in many other countries too, since its business accounts are available across the eurozone and the UK, which covers Sage's main European markets.
That said, the UK is Sage's home market, and a Sage business account there would compete with the banks and fintech companies that pay Sage to put its accounting into their apps, such as HSBC. I assume that is part of why Sage starts in France and positions the account next to its customers' existing banks.
