Banxware’s Orchestration Layer: The Next Chapter in SME Financing

The Structural Barriers in the SME Financing Ecosystem

Over the past five years, Banxware has been at the forefront of shaping embedded lending in the German market. What began as an innovative idea has since become a new standard. With digital financing solutions as Banxware's Sofortfinanzierung and HVB FlexFinanzierung, thousands of businesses have already secured fast, digital access to the capital they need to grow.

But this journey has also revealed something deeper. By working closely with SMEs, platforms, and capital providers, we uncovered structural challenges that go far beyond the lending process itself. These challenges shape the entire SME financing ecosystem and explain why, despite progress, too many businesses still struggle to get the right financing at the right time.

In the following, we take a closer look at these challenges for SMEs, platforms and capital providers.

1. SMEs: Barriers to Growth Remain

For SMEs, financing remains one of the greatest obstacles to growth. Traditional systems often underserve them, leaving too many businesses without the capital they need. Jens Roehrborn, Founder and CEO of Banxware, sums it up clearly:

“SMEs are the backbone of our economy. They create jobs, drive innovation, sustain supply chains. Yet, when it comes to financing, the system still fails them.” - Jens Roehrborn, Founder and CEO of Banxware

Despite significant progress in recent years, many SMEs still struggle to secure the financing they need. Access to capital remains fragmented, costs are often high, and existing products rarely reflect the diversity of business models and industries.

Alternative lenders have become more active on digital platforms, which has improved availability in some areas, but their offers sometimes fail to fully match the needs of SMEs. In many cases, the financing is limited in scope, lacks flexibility or comes at prices that are far less competitive than what banks could provide.

As a result, growth ambitions are too often slowed, not because of lack of potential, but because the right financing option isn’t available at the right time.

2. Platforms: Struggling to Meet Diverse SME Needs

For platforms, financing has become a core feature. They have understood that supporting their business customers with access to capital is essential to strengthening loyalty and ensuring long-term relationships. Embedded lending is no longer a “nice-to-have” but an expected part of the value they deliver.

The difficulty, however, lies in managing the size and diversity of their business customer base. Platforms serve SMEs across multiple industries and company sizes, each with unique financing needs. Relying on a single financing partner inevitably leaves gaps, while managing multiple providers quickly becomes too complex and too far removed from their core business.

In some cases, business customers even leave platforms to find better-priced or more tailored financing offers elsewhere, as Christian Steiger, CEO of Lexware, explains:

“Our accounting software platform supports 600.000 SMEs, of all sizes and industries. Covering such a wide range with one financing partner is almost impossible and some customers even leave our platform to look elsewhere for more competitive loan fees.” - Christian Steiger, CEO of Lexware

3. Banks: In Transition to the Digital Era

Banks, meanwhile, face a different set of challenges. They want to support SMEs with fast, digital products, but regulatory requirements and legacy systems make integration slow and resource-intensive. Even when suitable products exist, embedding them directly into SME workflows can be a major hurdle, preventing banks from delivering financing at the speed and convenience today’s businesses expect.

Adding to this is the issue of reach. SMEs increasingly expect financing to be available directly where they already work: on their platforms and within their digital tools. Few business owners visit a bank branch today, and this shift means banks need to go to their customers, not the other way around. For many banks, this is a structural challenge.

Operationally, SME lending is also difficult to scale. Margins in SME financing are often lower compared to corporate lending, while the cost of serving these customers remains high, as Martin Brinckmann, Member of the Executive Board at UniCredit, describes:

“The needs of our SME customers are constantly changing. We want to offer them fast and digital solutions and support them with adapted financing products. Despite regulatory requirements and legacy systems, we must be able to quickly integrate these products into the daily workflows of SMEs. This is a complex process.” - Martin Brinckmann, Member of the Executive Board UniCredit

These challenges reveal a clear gap. SMEs need fast, affordable, and accessible financing; platforms want to offer it without adding complexity; and banks are under pressure to modernize while struggling with legacy systems and cost structures.

Each side of the ecosystem recognizes the importance of SME financing, but none can fully solve the problem on their own.

Our Solution: Building an Orchestration Layer

To address these challenges, Banxware developed the Orchestration Layer. It can be understood as the operating system of embedded finance: not a point solution or a collection of isolated integrations, but a central layer that unites capital providers and platforms, referred to as SME aggregators, within one coherent system.

The Orchestration Layer manages the flow between capital providers (such as banks, alternative lenders, and asset managers on one side) and SME aggregators (including marketplaces, credit brokers, and neobanks with their SME customer base) on the other.

What this connection means in practice will be explained in the following.

1. The Benefits for Capital Providers

For capital providers such as the HypoVereinsbank/ UniCredit, the Orchestration Layer serves as the single point of entry into embedded finance.

With one connection to Banxware, capital providers can distribute their financing products across an entire network of platforms, instantly digitized and fully embedded into the workflows SMEs already use.

How the Orchestration Layer addresses key challenges for capital providers:

• High operating costs → Automated risk pre-checks, digital KYC, AML, and compliance built into the layer cut loan processing costs by up to 70%.
• Slow time-to-market → A single integration allows new financing products to go live across multiple platforms simultaneously.
• Limited reach → One connection opens access to a broad base of prequalified SMEs through trusted aggregators like marketplaces, neobanks, and credit brokers.
• Regulatory and risk constraints → Embedded compliance and monitoring tools lower exposure and reduce the burden on internal systems.
• Legacy IT barriers → Banxware translates existing financing products into a fully digitized, embedded experience, making them instantly usable in modern workflows.

In effect, the Orchestration Layer translates a bank’s existing financing products into a fully digitized, embedded experience, making competitive bank pricing available at fintech speed, as Martin Brinckmann explains: 

“Banxware opens access to untapped market potential with prequalified SMEs. They handle the technical integration and initial risk assessments, while also digitizing the financing offer end-to-end, enabling faster applications and a modern user experience. It’s the best of both worlds: We provide the capital, and Banxware delivers the digital infrastructure, speed, and reach.” - Martin Brinckmann, Member of the Executive Board at UniCredit

2. The Benefits for SME Aggregators

On the other side, the Orchestration Layer provides SME aggregators with a versatile financing engine. By integrating a single API, platforms gain access to a curated pool of capital, each with different strengths, risk appetites and product types.

For SME aggregators like Lexware, this eliminates the need to manage multiple contracts and integrations. The Orchestration Layer orchestrates all of this complexity behind the scenes and allows the integration of multiple capital providers within one single solution, as Christian Steiger explains:

“Through Banxware’s Orchestration Layer, I can offer my customers multiple financing options from different capital providers, covering more needs across all industries and company sizes, without building it all myself and with just one contract in place.” - Christian Steiger, CEO of Lexware

Most importantly, financing becomes a natural part of the platform experience. SMEs access it directly in the tools they already use, whether for accounting, payments, or e-commerce, under the platform’s brand and with minimal friction.

How the Orchestration Layer solves the pain points of SME Aggregators:

• Multiple contracts & integrations → One API and one contract cover all capital providers, eliminating operational overhead.
• Limited SME coverage → A diverse lender network ensures financing options for every business size and industry.
• Uncompetitive offers → Bank integration enables lower-cost capital alongside fintech speed.
• Risk of service gaps → Built-in redundancy guarantees “always-on” financing, even if one lender steps back.
• Customer churn → Embedded financing strengthens loyalty and retention by meeting customer expectations.

3. The Benefits for SMEs

Instead of navigating fragmented offers or overpriced alternatives, SMEs see financing that fits their needs, delivered at the right time and place.

They no longer have to spend time searching for financing products outside their trusted platform or comparing unfamiliar providers. Within the environment they already know and rely on, they are presented with offers from multiple banks and alternative lenders, giving them both choice and confidence.

All financing products are fully digitized, meaning SMEs spend less time on paperwork and administrative tasks. Applications, compliance checks, and approvals are streamlined into a fast, digital process. What once required weeks of research and manual documentation can now be completed in days or even hours.

For SMEs, the benefits are clear: trusted access to capital within their daily workflows, the reassurance of competitive and reliable offers, and the ability to secure financing faster and with far less effort than through traditional channels.

And the impact goes beyond individual businesses. Easier access to financing fuels innovation and contributes to a healthier economy overall.

Conclusion

From the very beginning, Banxware’s mission has been to empower businesses through better access to financing. Lending remains part of our DNA today, not only because it provides SMEs with the capital they need, but also because it gives us the insights to continuously improve. By lending ourselves, we learn in real time: running risk pre-checks, understanding SME behavior, and grounding our technology in market reality.

But lending alone was never enough. Over time, it became clear that banks, platforms, and SMEs all face deeper structural challenges that no single product could solve. To overcome them, we had to think bigger.

This thinking led to the Orchestration Layer, a central infrastructure that connects all players in one system. Within this framework, each participant can focus on their strengths:

• Banks and lenders provide capital at scale, without the technical and operational burden of countless integrations.
• Platforms and SME aggregators enhance their value with embedded financing, while staying focused on their core business.
• SMEs gain access to financing that is competitive, reliable, and seamlessly available within the platforms they already trust.

This alignment is what turns fragmentation into connection, as our founder Jens Roehrborn summarizes:

“It’s a true win-win-win: banks scale their reach, platforms grow their value, and SMEs get the financing they need to grow, right where they work.” - Jens Roehrborn, Founder and CEO of Banxware

Outlook

In the end, this is one big step further toward our vision of making SME lending easier, more efficient, and more profitable for everyone. We are proud to help bring the ecosystem closer together, fostering collaboration between all players and combining the strengths of each.

With this collective mindset, we're convinced that orchestration can turn individual efforts into a connected system that creates lasting value for all.

Curious about what orchestration could do for you? Reach us at partnerships@banxware.com