As we’ve expanded our open banking platform to the rest of Europe, we’re excited to announce that the Dutch company Tellow has partnered with us to create a one-stop shop that takes care of administrative tasks for micro businesses.
With more than 20,000 users, Tellow is a fast-growing business that’s on a mission to create more freedom for micro businesses and those self-employed in the Netherlands. We sat down with René Hesselink who’s Product Owner at Tellow to talk about how they see open banking as an enabler to making life easier for their customers.
A one-stop shop for businesses
It’s no secret that the end of an accounting period tends to be stressful for many businesses. Finding the right receipts and matching them to bank transactions is a time-consuming task that most companies dread.
To reduce administrative work for businesses, Tellow recently teamed up with our open banking platform Aiia to use financial data to automate manual tasks.
With that, Tellow has been able to create an app that takes care of everything from automated bookkeeping to financial forecasting and expense streams as well as providing an overall estimate of the financial health of the businesses. René elaborates:
“Our mission is to create stress-free lives for businesses that take care of administrative work themselves. With Aiia, our users are able to handle their bookkeeping within a few minutes while riding the bus, train or walking in the park. And if they decide to have a coffee in the park, Tellow will automatically recognise that transaction and allocate it for the user,” he says.
According to René, Tellow’s feature will save its users a lot of resources and stress just before the VAT return at the end of every quarter.
A big market to capture
With more than 1.1 million self-employed in the Netherlands, there’s no doubt that there’s a big market for Tellow. Because financial data is the core foundation of automating manual work, Tellow sees open banking as an essential part in capturing the Dutch market. Tellow’s CEO explains:
“Our partnership with Aiia allows our users to be confident, educated and in control of their finances, so they can focus on core business activities. When smaller businesses have a clear understanding of the financial health of their business, it allows them to build and grow with ease, flexibility and confidence. That in turn creates a stronger economic environment for all,” he says and continues:
“We teamed up with Aiia because of its very wide coverage. Tellow is a part of the Ageras Group, which is already fond of the open banking solutions that Aiia provides,” he concludes.
Following our expansion across the rest of Europe, we’ll be sharing a series of new partnerships with innovative businesses and organisations from the new markets.
If you’re curious about how you can use open banking to power your service or want to scale with us in a new EU market, please feel free to drop us a line or visit our open banking blog for more inspirational use cases.
