Alternatives to Fagura

Krea

🇸🇪 Sweden

Krea helps Swedish businesses compare and access financing offers.

Payhawk

🇧🇬 Bulgaria

Most companies still manage corporate spending the way they did a decade ago—expense reports, manual reconciliation, scattered receipts. Payhawk has built something radically simpler: a unified spending platform that gives finance teams complete visibility into every company transaction, from the moment it's authorized to the moment it's reconciled. The platform combines physical and virtual cards, automated expense management, and real-time spend controls in a single dashboard. What sets Payhawk apart in the crowded corporate finance space is its refusal to compromise on user experience. Employees aren't fighting clunky interfaces or wrestling with legacy systems. Instead, they get an intuitive mobile app that feels like personal fintech, while finance teams gain the analytical firepower to actually manage policy, catch fraud, and optimize spending patterns. The company treats visibility not as a nice-to-have but as the foundation of control. In Europe's SME and mid-market space, where most alternatives still rely on outdated card programs or disconnected software suites, Payhawk's integration of issuance, spend management, and analytics represents a meaningful shift. The company has quietly built something that enterprises have wanted for years: a spending platform that doesn't require compromise between employee experience and financial governance. For finance leaders tired of spreadsheets and reactive reporting, it's become the natural choice.

Founded 2019

Younited

🇫🇷 France

Younited provides instant credit and embedded lending across Europe.

Founded 2009

Belvo

🇪🇸 Spain

Belvo is a fintech infrastructure company that lets developers tap into Latin American banking data without building a single integration. The platform connects to thousands of banks and financial institutions across Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, and Peru, unlocking account balances, transaction histories, and identity information through a single API. Rather than forcing developers to chase down fragmented banking systems, Belvo standardizes chaotic regional financial infrastructure into clean, predictable data flows. Its core insight is simple: Latin American fintech is drowning in bank connectivity work when it should be building products. Belvo solves that. The platform serves fintechs, neobanks, and traditional financial institutions looking to modernize lending decisions, open banking integrations, and embedded finance experiences. Think of it as the connective tissue between fractured regional banking systems and the apps that need to run on top of them. By abstracting away the complexity of working with hundreds of different bank APIs and connection methods, Belvo has become the standard for financial data aggregation in a region where banking infrastructure is anything but standardized. It's the kind of boring-but-essential infrastructure that powers smarter lending, faster onboarding, and new financial products across Latin America.

Founded 2019

iwoca

🇬🇧 United Kingdom

iwoca is a British fintech that turns the SME lending game upside down. Instead of sitting in a bank branch explaining cashflow statements to a skeptical manager, small business owners can get funded in days—sometimes hours—through a slick online platform. The company uses AI and open banking data to assess creditworthiness, stripping away the gatekeeping that's long defined traditional lending. Founded in 2012, iwoca has become one of the few alternative lenders that actually feels like it was built in the 21st century, not retrofitted from a 1995 spreadsheet. The core pitch is deceptively simple: connect your business bank account, let the algorithm run, and get a decision without the theater. Most UK banks still treat SMEs like supplicants; iwoca treats them like customers. Loans range from a few thousand pounds to over £100,000, flexibly structured to match actual business needs rather than the lender's comfort zone. The speed is the real differentiator—traditional invoice financing can take weeks; iwoca's paperless approach cuts that to days. The algorithm isn't a black box either; transparency around how decisions are made matters when you're asking entrepreneurs to trust a machine over a handshake. In the crowded European alternative lending space, iwoca has managed to feel both established and scrappy, which is rare. The company works with institutional capital partners (including the British Business Bank, which treats it almost like a quasi-public utility at this point), so you're not betting your growth on a startup's runway. That institutional backing combined with actual product design separates iwoca from the dozens of me-too players that launched in its wake and either pivoted or died. It's become a fixture in the UK's alternative lending ecosystem—the rare fintech that solved a real problem without needing a TikTok audience to prove it.

Founded 2012

Wayflyer

🇮🇪 Ireland

Wayflyer is an Irish fintech that solves a peculiar problem in e-commerce: founders who sell online often can't access the capital they need because traditional banks don't understand their business model. The company uses real-time sales data from platforms like Shopify and Amazon to underwrite credit decisions in minutes rather than months, offering flexible funding with repayment terms tied directly to daily revenue. What makes Wayflyer different is its willingness to lend to merchants that legacy finance overlooks—lower-revenue sellers, newer businesses, international operators. While traditional lenders fixate on collateral and personal credit scores, Wayflyer looks at transaction flows, growth trajectory, and actual business performance. The underwriting is algorithmic, the approval is fast, and the cost is transparent. You don't need perfect credit or three years of accounts. You need sales data. In the crowded world of e-commerce financing, most players focus either on micro-loans or venture-scale rounds. Wayflyer operates in the messy middle—typically funding between €5,000 and €500,000 for merchants generating €30,000+ monthly revenue. It competes with Shopify Capital in North America but has built particular strength across Europe, where merchant fragmentation is higher and credit access more constrained. The company represents a broader shift in fintech: away from point solutions toward platforms that integrate data, credit decisioning, and cash flow management. Wayflyer isn't just lending; it's becoming infrastructure for the digital commerce economy, particularly for the thousands of small sellers who power e-commerce but remain invisible to traditional finance.

Founded 2017

Narvi

🇫🇮 Finland

Narvi is a European fintech that simplifies embedded lending for e-commerce and marketplace platforms. Rather than forcing merchants to build lending infrastructure from scratch, Narvi handles the entire loan lifecycle—from origination through servicing—as a white-label API that integrates directly into checkout flows. The company targets online retailers and marketplace operators who want to offer buy-now-pay-later and installment credit without the operational overhead of underwriting, collections, or compliance. Narvi handles credit decisions using proprietary scoring models and manages all regulatory requirements, while merchants simply embed a widget and capture incremental revenue. In a market crowded with point-solution BNPL providers, Narvi positions itself as a full-stack lending partner rather than a payment mode. The company serves merchants across Europe and has built integrations with major e-commerce platforms, making it simpler for smaller retailers to compete with well-funded rivals on financing offerings. Narvi represents a growing class of embedded finance infrastructure plays—companies enabling non-financial businesses to offer financial products without becoming financial institutions themselves. Its role is to abstract complexity and regulatory burden, letting merchants focus on customer experience and growth.

Founded 2020

Bid Finance

🇵🇱 Poland

Bid Finance is a European platform that streamlines how small and mid-sized businesses access working capital finance. Rather than the traditional dance of chasing multiple lenders and dealing with weeks of paperwork, the platform lets SMEs connect with a curated network of funding providers—banks, alternative lenders, and institutional investors—through a single application. The process is built around speed and transparency: once a business posts its financing need, multiple lenders can compete for the deal, which typically means better terms and faster decisions. What sets Bid Finance apart is its marketplace model. Instead of being another loan originator or broker that simply refers you somewhere else, it facilitates genuine competition between funders. SMEs see real-time offers and can compare pricing and terms side by side. It's the B2B equivalent of price transparency in consumer finance, but applied to the murky world of business lending where information asymmetry has long been the norm. The platform operates across multiple European markets, positioning itself as a pan-European solution for working capital, invoice financing, and asset-based lending. It targets businesses that don't fit neatly into the big bank's playbooks—growing firms that need flexible, responsive funding without the bureaucracy. For lenders, it reduces sourcing costs and lets them plug into deal flow they'd otherwise struggle to access. Bid Finance represents a broader shift in how European SMEs access capital: moving away from relationship banking and towards digital-first, competitive marketplaces where multiple parties bid on deals in near real-time.

Founded 2015

Raize

🇵🇹 Portugal

Raize operates an online lending and investment platform for Portuguese SMEs.

Founded 2014

Swile

🇫🇷 France

Swile tackles the unglamorous but essential problem of employee benefits administration—turning what's typically a bureaucratic nightmare into something that actually works for modern companies. The Paris-based platform bundles meal vouchers, transportation allowances, childcare support, and wellness benefits into a single card and app that employees actually want to use. Instead of juggling multiple vendor relationships and paper trails, HR teams get one interface to manage everything. Employees scan a card or phone at participating restaurants, shops, and gyms, earning tax-advantaged benefits while employers simplify their compliance burden. It's the kind of boring-but-essential infrastructure that scales across Europe—Swile operates in France, Spain, Italy, and beyond. What sets Swile apart in the crowded benefits space is its focus on the entire employee lifecycle rather than just one vertical. While competitors obsess over meal vouchers or mobility, Swile positions itself as a comprehensive benefits platform. The company raised significant Series B funding and expanded aggressively across continental Europe, proving that there's real appetite for consolidation here. Swile represents a broader shift in how European companies think about compensation: less about salary alone, more about total employee experience. By digitizing what was once entirely analog, Swile has become an essential piece of HR infrastructure for mid-market and enterprise employers across the region.

Founded 2016

OneFor

🇬🇧 United Kingdom

OneFor is a European fintech platform that reimagines how SMEs access and manage working capital. Rather than treating finance as a transactional afterthought, OneFor embeds cash flow tools, invoice financing, and dynamic credit solutions directly into the workflows where small business owners actually work. The platform pulls together accounts data, payment history, and real-time transaction flows to offer instant access to capital without the friction of traditional bank applications. What sets OneFor apart is its positioning as a cash flow operating system rather than just another lending product. It serves companies that traditional banks have largely abandoned—the messy middle of European small business—by automating the visibility and accessibility of working capital. While legacy banks still demand spreadsheets and weeks of underwriting, OneFor delivers decisions in hours using behavioral data and API connections to accounting software. The company operates across Western Europe with particular traction in the UK and Nordics, building a loyal following among founders who've grown tired of juggling multiple finance tools. Its integration-first approach means OneFor sits comfortably alongside existing business software stacks, making it feel less like switching banks and more like upgrading your CFO's toolkit. In a crowded SME finance space, OneFor's bet is that speed, transparency, and embedded simplicity will ultimately win over traditional lending relationships.

Founded 2020

Thincats

🇬🇧 United Kingdom

Thincats operates in a corner of fintech that most ignore: connecting small businesses with alternative lenders through a streamlined platform. Rather than chasing venture capital headlines or consumer wallet share, Thincats has built infrastructure that lets SMEs access non-bank funding—invoice financing, merchant cash advances, and working capital lines—without the eight-week application gauntlet traditional banks impose. The platform acts as a marketplace, matching borrowers with lenders who actually want to move fast. For businesses stuck between outgrowing their bank line and being too risky for institutional capital, Thincats solves a real problem. Most fintech either targets individuals drowning in consumer debt or targets enterprises with nine-figure balance sheets. Thincats sits in the profitable, often overlooked middle. The company has quietly built meaningful scale in the UK and Australian markets, processing billions in lending volume. Its real innovation isn't technological flash—it's operational: turning SME lending from a six-month negotiation into a process that works at the speed business actually moves. In a landscape dominated by robo-advisors and app-based checking accounts, Thincats represents a different breed of fintech: unglamorous, profitable, and deeply embedded in how actual businesses access capital.

Founded 2012