The archive · Money & Fintech · Strategic decision · 2019–2026
fiskaly bets Germany's e-invoice mandate turns tax compliance into an API utility
Vienna's fiskaly bets every POS must comply in the cloud: 800+ B2B customers, 600,000+ terminals, and a Verdane round after five self-funded years.
fiskaly
What the business is
fiskaly is a cloud-based fiscalization provider: an API that lets POS software and retailers record, sign, and archive every cash transaction, and now issue EN 16931-compliant e-invoices without hardware.
How it started
Johannes Ferner, Simon Tragatschnig, and Patrick Gaubatz founded fiskaly in Vienna in 2019. Their bet was that Germany's cash-register security law (KassenSichV), which forced every point of sale to sign and store each transaction, would be won by a cloud API rather than by hardware. By 2022 fiskaly had become the go-to certified cloud fiscalization provider in Germany, and in spring 2023 it expanded to Spain.
What happened
In June 2024 Verdane invested from its Freya XI fund - amount undisclosed - in what fiskaly called its first institutional money, to deepen Germany, Austria, and Spain and fund international expansion. Germany then codified B2B e-invoicing in the Growth Opportunities Act: from January 1, 2025 every domestic VAT-registered business must be able to receive EN 16931 e-invoices, with mandatory issuance phasing in through 2028. fiskaly added E-INVOICE APIs for XRechnung and ZUGFeRD, launched its Sign IT cloud-receipts product in Italy in October 2024 after Italy's DL 108/2024 allowed cloud receipts without certified hardware, and passed EUR 10M in recurring revenue.
How it ended up
Scaling: fiskaly remains the market-leading cloud fiscalization provider in Austria, Germany, and Spain, and is rolling E-INVOICE out as the German mandate shifts from receiving (2025) toward mandatory issuance for all B2B transactions (2028).
Background
fiskaly is a Vienna-based regtech that turns tax compliance into a cloud API. Founded in 2019 by Johannes Ferner, Simon Tragatschnig, and Patrick Gaubatz, it sells fiscalization - digitally signing and archiving every cash-register transaction - and now e-invoicing to POS software vendors and large retailers, replacing the certified hardware boxes that dominated compliance.
The bet was that European tax mandates would keep arriving and that a single cloud API would be the layer every POS vendor integrates. Germany's 2020 cash-register security law (KassenSichV) was the first wave: by 2022 fiskaly had become the go-to certified cloud provider in Germany, serving POS vendors like SumUp, Lightspeed, orderbird, and ready2order, and by December 2024 it reported 800+ B2B customers and 600,000+ POS terminals.
The second wave came from the Growth Opportunities Act: from January 1, 2025, every German VAT-registered business must be able to receive EN 16931 e-invoices, with mandatory issuance phasing in through 2028. fiskaly added E-INVOICE APIs (XRechnung, ZUGFeRD) and, in October 2024, launched Sign IT in Italy after Italy's DL 108/2024 allowed cloud receipts without certified hardware.
Financially, fiskaly bootstrapped for five years, passed EUR 10M recurring revenue in 2023 with more than 30% year-on-year growth, and in June 2024 took its first institutional money - a growth investment from Verdane's Freya XI fund, amount undisclosed - to expand across Europe. It is scaling as the German e-invoice obligation shifts from receiving (2025) to full B2B issuance (2028).
What has to be true
- The founders picked a mandate-driven market where regulation, not taste, forces every merchant to buy compliance - and timed it before the 2020 German cash-register law.
- They bet the architecture would shift from hardware boxes to cloud APIs, which proved right as certified-cloud became the default and POS vendors preferred integration over devices.
- They treated each new regulation as a product line: KassenSichV first, then e-invoicing under the Growth Opportunities Act, then Italy's DL 108/2024 cloud-receipts opening.
- They stayed self-funding until traction was proven (EUR 10M recurring revenue, 800+ customers), so Verdane's 2024 growth round came on strength, not promise.
- Concrete, dated evidence supports the case: Die Presse 2024-12-01 (800+ customers, 600,000+ terminals), Verdane June 2024, Startupbusiness 2024-10-23.
What can be applied
Bet on regulation expanding, and on the recurring software layer - not hardware - capturing the value; each new mandate (2020 registers, 2025 e-invoicing) becomes the next product line.
Aftermath
As of September 2, 2026, fiskaly is scaling as the leading cloud fiscalization provider in Austria, Germany, and Spain, with E-INVOICE rollouts extending across Europe. Germany's mandate is mid-transition: reception of e-invoices has been obligatory since January 1, 2025, while mandatory issuance phases in - optional until end-2026, required from 2027 for businesses over EUR 800,000 turnover, and universal for domestic B2B from 2028 - so each phase adds customers to fiskaly's API. Revenue and customer figures are company- and press-reported rather than audited.
Sources
- fiskaly secures investment from growth investor Verdane
- Fintech, scaleup Fiskaly opens in Italy and closes a growth round
- The introduction of mandatory e-invoicing in Germany is getting closer
- Start-up-Steckbrief: Maßgeschneiderte Fiskalisierungs-Lösungen
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