Pleo also wants to manage business expenses in France

A Danish FinTech that created a mobile business expense management service, Pleo has established itself as a Unicorn following a fundraising round in July 2021. Since then, it has been consolidating its status as a reference in its market in Europe and has just announced its positioning in a new country, France.

FACTS

• Pleo will now offer its corporate expense management services in France. Employees of French companies wishing to become Pleo customers will soon be able to use its practical and fun tools to declare their expenses.

• The Danish fintech plans to impose its service on French SMEs to help them automate the management of their employees' expenses and simplify their administrative tasks.

• Pleo has an e-money licence and a partnership with MasterCard to ensure the deployment of its service.

CHALLENGES

• Continue its European expansion: Pleo is a start-up born in Denmark in 2015, which has been able to expand into new markets over the years. Today, it offers its services in 11 countries, including 7 where the company currently has offices: Denmark, United Kingdom, Germany, Ireland, Spain, Sweden and France.

• Capturing more and more new customers: This geographical expansion should enable Pleo to follow its main objective, that of growing its customer portfolio. The FinTech currently has more than 20,000 corporate customers and is valued at nearly $4.7 billion.

MARKET PERSPECTIVE

• In France, French companies are still lagging behind in terms of equipping themselves with optimised professional expense management tools. Pleo estimates that almost one in two SMEs (45%) still manage their expenses manually using spreadsheets or even notebooks. These figures come from a study carried out by Pleo last February among 300 French SMEs.

• This observation was made by the FinTech despite the presence of numerous specialised players, including Spendesk, on the French market. Pleo is therefore clearly not afraid of this potential competition given the market share still available for this type of service in France.