A newly published case study by ToolTime and Adyen provides further details about the ToolTime Pay product offering (Adyen). ToolTime targets the crafts industry and helps craftsmen with project management, time recording, invoices and more. ToolTime Pay itself consists of two features: virtual IBANs for automatic reconciliation of incoming payments with open invoices and a payment solution via so-called payment links (customers receive the invoice via email and can pay the amount with a card or Apple Pay, for example).
What the case study leaves out
ToolTime Pay was launched already in 2024 (as covered by your favourite Embedded Finance newsletter), but the case study goes a bit deeper. Unfortunately, the article does not mention any usage data of the payment product itself and only mentions usage data for the ToolTime core product (>15,000 businesses using it to invoice more than 2 billion euros per year). However, based on my experience, Adyen publishes such case studies only when a particular milestone is reached, which indicates a notable adoption of the ToolTime Pay product.
A few weeks later, ToolTime's co-founder and CPO Marcel Mansfeld filled in some of the gaps on the Embedded Finance Review Podcast. The first version of ToolTime Pay went live with card payments only, for technical reasons, and it did not go well. Bank transfers are the default way to pay a craftsman in Germany, and cards now make up only around one to two percent of the payment volume. ToolTime charges 1% on bank transfers, capped at €10. What craftsmen get for it is an invoice that is marked as paid automatically once the money arrives, with automated dunning when it does not.
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Why embedded payments are the first step for vertical SaaS
For vertical SaaS providers, an Embedded Payments product is often the first step into the world of Embedded Finance. While it can become a massive revenue channel, the move is often highly strategic. Bringing payment flows, which have been conducted outside of your product, in-house also helps to reduce churn and increase adoption of the core product. And maybe even more important than that, it helps to launch other financial products. It wouldn’t be far-fetched to envision ToolTime offering a full-fledged banking product (not just for incoming payments) and a lending product.
Marcel described both directions on the podcast, as ideas rather than announced products. A business account would let craftsmen pay their wholesalers from inside ToolTime, and a short-term loan could bridge the month when a large project has not been paid yet. On lending, the infrastructure has moved since. Adyen now offers financing to platforms through Adyen Capital, with Fresha and ROLLER among the first, and offers are based on a business's payment history on Adyen. My read is that ToolTime would not need a new provider for a lending product, since the payment data already sits with Adyen.
HERO takes a different approach in the same market
ToolTime is no longer alone with this idea. In June 2026, HERO Software launched HERO Wallet with Swan, giving each customer of a craft business its own virtual IBAN, with automatic reconciliation and dunning built in. The product logic is close to ToolTime Pay, but the pricing differs: HERO charges no transaction fee on incoming SEPA payments and includes the wallet in its subscription. As I read it, ToolTime monetises payments directly, while HERO uses them to make its subscription stickier. Neither company has published usage figures for its payment product so far.
