Pleo to provide Aqilla users with smart credit cards, expense tool

By Sunniva Kolostyak

Danish FinTech Pleo has partnered with accounting software firm Aqilla to provide smart credit cards alongside an automated expense solution at a discounted rate.

Aqilla users will get a pre-authorised card to remove the need for upfront spending, alongside automated expense reports, significantly simplifying bookkeeping.

Pleo, a B2B scale-up which has the ability to directly integrate with cloud accountancy platforms like Xero, has a proprietary technology platform which complements Aqilla’s cloud-based software by providing automated receipt capture and real-time spending overview.

Hugh Scantlebury, CEO and co-founder of Aqilla, explained that the partnership came about Pleo’s corporate credit card and expenses solution offer something that traditional expense applications cannot – a pre-authorised card which eradicates the need for employee upfront spend and offers automated expense reports.

“Pleo’s offering complements Aqilla’s own expense system well, offering different solutions for different organisations and their requirements. Together, we will be able to deliver a simple, easy and effortless card-based expenses system to our customers, giving the finance team some much needed time back to focus on the bigger and more important priorities that they may be facing in these challenging times,” Scantlebury said.

Pleo’s recent customer survey finding businesses managers can spend up to 10 hours per month on expenses. The same study also found that Pleo has saved its customers on average 11.5 hours on managing expenses – freeing up their time for more strategic work.

The FinTech closed a $56 million Series B round in May 2019, led by New York-based growth fund Stripes, and is now used by over 10,000 customers across six European countries, with the company supported by strategic and technical partnerships with Mastercard, J.P. Morgan and Danske Bank.

Commenting, Olov Eriksson, VP of Product at Pleo, said: “A shocking amount of businesses are still using legacy processes when it comes to managing their expenses, and aren’t aware of the unnecessary stress they are putting their employees through.

“Pleo takes this business strain, and reduces it to zero, improving the working lives of both employees and their managers with smart and simple solutions. We’re hugely excited to be partnering with a business like Aqilla to help make money management simple for their customers.”