Tide to Launch Financial Platform for Small Businesses in Germany

Tide will launch its business financial platform in Germany, aiming to serve small businesses in Europe’s largest economy.

Already available in the United Kingdom and India, the platform provides connected finance and admin solutions designed for small businesses that don’t have a finance function, the company said in a Tuesday (March 12) press release.

“Our goal is to help reduce the financial and administrative management burdens with our advanced business financial platform,” Oliver Prill, CEO of Tide, said in the release. “Looking at what is on offer for [small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs)] in Germany, we believe there is a huge opportunity for Tide.”

The Tide app will be launched in Germany in the coming months; in the meantime, potential customers can join a waiting list, according to the release.

Tide’s platform capabilities will be rolled out step by step, beginning with its Business Account and card products, followed by invoicing, cash flow forecasting and other solutions, the release said.

The company currently serves more than 575,000 SMBs in the U.K., which was its first market, and 200,000 SMBs in India, where it launched in December 2022, per the release.

Its third market, Germany, is Europe’s largest economy, has nearly 3 million small businesses and is seeing a growing trend toward the use of digital solutions to manage finances, according to the press release.

“As in the U.K., small businesses are the backbone of the Germany economy, Europe’s largest,” Prill said in the release. “Our success in the U.K. has been built on having a deep understanding of the pain points of small businesses, the self-employed and freelancers.”

In another recent development in this space, Commerzbank and Global Payments teamed up in January to offer digital payment solutions to German small businesses. Together, the companies have formed Commerz Globalpay GmbH, which will offer merchants a suite of omnichannel payment and software solutions.

In May, European FinTech Mollie launched an in-person payments solution in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. The solution, Mollie Terminal, integrates in-person and online payments, meeting the needs of merchants who operate both brick-and-mortar and online stores. The device works through a single application programming interface and operates on both 4G and Wi-Fi.