Time is money. But for SMBs, time is their most pressing need, with over 60% of finance teams still relying on manual approvals and reconciliations, spending thousands of hours each year on work that could be automated. Real-time, intelligent spend and cash management directly solves this, giving them back the time to focus on growth.
For most SMBs, spend management is the silent killer of margin, productivity, and scale. And the numbers back it up:
€58. That’s the average cost of manually processing one expense report. Multiply that across hundreds of employees, and it becomes unsustainable.
70% of organisations say stress-testing their business’s financial health has become more important than ever, according to the CFO's Playbook for 2025.
When finance teams are tied up in receipts and reconciliations, they’re locked out of more valuable work. Progress slows, not because of lack of insight, but because the tools don’t support the pace or complexity of modern business.
If you're a bank, a fintech marketplace, or a specialist software platform working with SMBs, you’re sitting on a major opportunity. Spend and cash management tools are no longer just features, but a growth strategy. And yet, most partners stop at cards. Stopping at offering cards is like selling individual car parts when your customer really needs a vehicle to get where they’re going — it doesn’t solve the whole issue. Or worse, they push the problem to third-party tools that only partially solve it.
That’s where differentiation dies.
Embedded finance is becoming a structural advantage—resolving issues upstream and eliminating friction across digital ecosystems. Spend controls, expense reporting, liquidity tracking—delivered natively within the platforms your customers already rely on—shift finance from a task to a capability.
This is not about adding another dashboard. It’s about equipping your customers with real-time insight and meaningful financial guidance—tools that act less like software and more like a mini CFO.
The result is a deeper relationship. Your platform moves from being one of many tools to a critical partner in strategic growth. And what begins as better functionality becomes stronger retention and higher customer lifetime value.
When your SMB customers are stuck chasing receipts or reconciling fragmented spend manually, it impacts their growth—and, in turn, yours. Managing multiple vendors, budgets across matrixed organisations, and VAT across complex rule sets becomes harder. For example, in the UK, you can claim VAT on hot food but not cold food. The complexity is endless without the right tools.
Pleo Embedded gives you a way to change that.
Now you can offer a ready-made spend and cash management suite directly inside your platform—no clunky integrations or outside tools. We’ve done it for over 40,000 customers over the past 10 years, focused on helping European SMBs thrive and compete.
Here’s what that makes possible:
Deeper product engagement
Finance tools embedded within your experience create stickiness. Users come back not just for your core service, but to manage their finances too.
New revenue streams
By enabling spend and cash management, you unlock monetisation models that go beyond your current offering.
Fast, flexible integration
Pre-built and proven modular infrastructure, making it easy and flexible to plug Pleo Embedded into your platform and support your SMB base without disruption.
Built for your brand
Fully white-labelled setup that aligns with your brand strategy and customer experience.
When customers are caught up in manual spend processes, they lose the capacity to plan, adapt and grow. By embedding smarter tools, you give them back control—along with the time to focus on what matters most.
What your customers gain:
Real-time visibility into spend and available cash
A unified, intelligent workflow that removes duplication
Automated approvals and stronger forecasting capabilities
What your business gains:
A differentiated product experience that improves retention
Higher revenue per customer through increased engagement
Greater lifetime value from deeper, more strategic relationships
Pleo Embedded is not a bolt-on. It’s a structural advantage—built to help your platform deliver more value, empower your customers to move faster, and support long-term, mutual growth.
Pleo is already delivering meaningful results for SMBs across Europe. Imagine delivering that kind of value across your entire SMB customer base — not through siloed tools, but through embedded spend management designed for scale.
Cooltra, for example, operating a fleet of over 20,000 vehicles in six countries, reduced expense admin time by 75% and gained full visibility into team spending. Shellworks, a fast-scaling biotech firm, brought reconciliation time down from three hours to just 30 minutes while equipping teams with real-time spend control.
These outcomes reflect what’s possible for companies looking to embed spend management at scale — especially those serving a large base of SMB customers.
Reach out to our team at contact-embedded@pleo.io to explore how Pleo Embedded can fit your vision—and your roadmap.
Kunal Galav recently joined Pleo to lead the charge on delivering scalable embedded finance solutions to businesses in need of intelligent financial management solutions for their SMB clientele. With a background spanning HSBC, Mambu, McKinsey, and Credit Suisse, Kunal brings deep expertise at the intersection of banking and fintech—driving innovation where it matters most.