The archive · Money & Fintech · Strategic decision · 2019–2025
Swan's embedded-banking bet: banking as an API, €1.5B/mo volume, 150 embedders
Paris's Swan bet software firms would offer accounts and cards inside their own products instead of sending users to a bank. $87M raised, €1.5B monthly.
Swan
What the business is
Embedded finance / Banking-as-a-Service: an API platform letting any company issue payment accounts, virtual and physical cards (Apple Pay, Google Pay), and process pay-ins, pay-outs and SEPA direct debits for its own customers.
Starting capital：€37M/$40M Series B led by Lakestar (Sep 2023), with Accel, Creandum, Bpifrance; €42M extension led by Eight Roads (Jan 2025)
How it started
Swan was founded in Paris in 2019 out of the eFounders startup studio (now Hexa) by Nicolas Benady and Mathieu Breton. Rather than building yet another consumer fintech app on top of someone else's API, they aimed at the layer below: licensing, compliance and core banking, exposed as simple APIs for other software companies to embed.
What happened
Swan onboarded more than 100 companies, then crossed 150, including French accounting unicorn Pennylane, the freelancer admin tool Indy, Agicap, Factorial, Lucca and Sesame. In September 2023 it raised a $40M Series B led by Lakestar with Accel participating; in January 2025 it added a €42M second tranche led by Eight Roads, with plans to expand to Italy next, and was below unicorn valuation.
How it ended up
150 embedded-banking clients processing €1.5 billion monthly as of 2025-01-29; ~$87M total raised; still sub-unicorn but growing, with international expansion next.
Background
Swan's bet is that the bank account is becoming a feature of other software, not a destination. Its API lets an accounting tool, a freelancer platform or an inventory platform offer its own users accounts, cards and direct debits — with Swan silently handling licensing, KYC, compliance and the core ledger. The company built its own core banking system rather than wrapping an existing bank, which is why it can offer local IBANs and products country by country.
The strategy attached to fast-growing software companies: Pennylane (now a French unicorn), Indy, Agicap, Factorial, Lucca and Sesame among roughly 150 companies running on Swan by January 2025, moving €1.5 billion per month. Investors bought the same story — Lakestar led a $40M Series B in September 2023 with Accel alongside, and Eight Roads led a €42M extension in January 2025.
What Swan sells is pain removal. Its customers get the option to handle money without handling money: no payment institution license, no card production, no KYC team. The trade-off Swan accepted is that embedded finance margins are thinner per client than running a consumer neobank — it must win on volume of integrations and the depth of each product relationship.
What has to be true
- Owning the core banking system made local IBANs and country-specific rails possible, a capability most BaaS resellers on top of someone else's API cannot match.
- Selling to software companies with embedded workflows (accounting, freelancer tools) gives Swan distribution into hundreds of end users per integration.
- The studio origin (eFounders/Hexa) let the founders validate the thesis with early customers before raising institutional capital.
- The January 2025 tranche shows the model scales without a unicorn valuation story — a steady stream of embedded-finance volume backstopped by a growing customer list.
What can be applied
Instead of competing with incumbents on the surface, sell them and everyone else the plumbing underneath: owning the core system and compliance lets any product add banking with one API call.
Aftermath
As of 2025-01-29 Swan remains a sub-unicorn with roughly 150 clients and €1.5B in monthly transaction volume, funded to around $87M. CEO Nicolas Benady told TechCrunch the company would keep expanding country by country, with Italy next on the roadmap. Its customers — particularly Pennylane, which became a unicorn in 2024 — show the strategy of embedding banking where users already work is compounding, and its own core-banking investment is the moat that differentiates it from the reseller layer of competitors.
Sources
- Swan secures $40 million to bring embedded banking to Europe
- European embedded banking startup Swan adds another $44M to its Series B
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