Holvi, the BBVA-owned digital banking specialist for self-employed business owners, has officially expanded its services to its third core market, which is the UK. The company’s other core markets are Germany and Finland. Its further operating countries are Ireland, Belgium, France, Italy, and the Netherlands.
As previously reported, Holvi provides entrepreneurs and SMEs with a “regulated one-stop-shop” to collect income, manage expenses, and offer a real-time view of finances, which includes online sales platform, invoicing facility and cashflow tracker. The company is a licensed authorized payment institution and is authorized to operate across the European Economic Area (EEA) under the Payment Services Directive by the Finnish Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA). The company was acquired by BBVA in 2016.
“Holvi’s mission is to create financial efficiency for sole traders and freelancers by saving them time and helping them to succeed with a service that’s as simple as possible. It does this by removing both friction – such as manually inputting receipt entries on laborious expense spreadsheets – and jargon and complicated calculations required for tax and invoice management.”
Speaking about the expansion into the UK, Holvi CEO, Antti-Jussi Suominen, stated:
“The U.K. is one of the most important markets for fintechs and has always been known as a nation of sole traders. We have years of experience supporting this specific type of microbusiness and our research shows that our users can save over three weeks of valuable working time every year by automating routine accounting tasks with our service.”
Suominen added:
“We want to support every single sole trader and freelancer in the U.K. They are the backbone of the economy, and we genuinely believe that the banking market for microbusinesses is underserved and ineffective – it simply doesn’t work for a lot of businesses. For most people, their business is personal and therefore they need a tailored, personal solution from their banking partner – something Holvi delivers.”