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# Swan adds card acceptance for freelancers at Accountable and Indy
- URL: https://www.embeddedfinancereview.com/swan-adds-card-acceptance-for-freelancers-at-accountable-and-indy/
- Published: 2026-08-31T09:47:06.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-31T09:47:06.000Z
- Description: Swan brings payment acceptance to Accountable and Indy's freelancer users, and why it matters for Swan's own balances and P&L.
- Author: Lars Markull
- Tags: News, Embedded Banking, Embedded Payments, France, Germany, Accounting, Embedder, Enabler, Accountable, Swan, Indy

Accountable has launched Tap to Pay inside its Accountable app, letting German freelancers accept card payments directly on their phone with Swan handling the acceptance behind the scenes. The freelancer opens the app, enters the amount, and holds the client's card or phone against the NFC sensor, and the money settles into the account the following business day. Accountable is the Belgian tax and accounting app that markets itself heavily in Germany, and launched Embedded Banking powered by Swan in January 2025, though it is not Swan's first payment acceptance client: the French accounting platform Indy launched a similar feature before.

### Why Swan is adding payment acceptance now

So why would an embedded banking provider bother building payment acceptance at all? Every freelancer has two sides to manage: money going out and money coming in. Paying a supplier works fine, whether by SEPA transfer or with the card that comes with the account, and so does paying at a terminal with that same card. Getting paid is often a bit more complicated. Incoming money is typically limited to transfers, whether from the freelancer's other accounts or from a client settling an invoice by SEPA, and often there is no way to accept anything else. That becomes a real problem, especially when taking small amounts in person, a yoga teacher collecting cash after a class being the obvious example. Without a way to accept a card or phone payment, the choice was cash or asking the client to open their banking app on the spot. An instant SEPA transfer would technically solve it, but the experience is clunky compared with tapping a card. Thus, card or phone payments are still the more widely accepted habit (at least for now; we will see whether WERO changes this).

![](https://www.embeddedfinancereview.com/content/images/2026/08/Untitled-2026-05-30-2211-1.svg)

Payment acceptance closes that gap, and it only matters for freelancers and small businesses, but that is evidently a large enough group that Swan decided to build it. My guess is that Swan has no interest in chasing pure acceptance deals; thus, an Embedded Banking feature is crucial for them. So the payment acceptance feature likely targets the Embedded Banking clients it already has, starting with the freelance-focused ones where the need is strongest, and likely SME-focused clients as a next step. However, many of those SMEs that require this feature will likely already have a payment acceptance partner in place. Whether Swan's version can replace that will come down to the product itself (e.g., which payment types it can actually accept), and, likely even more important, the fees.

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### Swan's business case: fees and balances

But that brings us back to the question: why does a banking-as-a-service provider build such a product if it's only relevant for a subsegment of its existing clients? One answer could be that the payment acceptance feature also brings another crucial benefit for the BaaS provider: raising the average balance sitting in its accounts. This barely mattered through the zero-interest years, but with rates back in the positive, it can become a real driver of the BaaS' P&L. Therefore, we could argue Swan's business case depends not only on payment acceptance fees, but also on the increase in balances those payments leave behind.

### Which other embedded banking providers offer both rails

Swan is not the first banking-as-a-service provider to also offer payment acceptance. For example, Paynetics also covers both sides, and the bankrupt Intergiro offered both before losing its licence last year. Running both sides is a different business from running either alone, though, and it puts you in competition with standalone payment service providers. I assume a handful of freelancer-focused partners likely won't be enough on their own to make that business case work, so I'll follow further adoption.