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

The Structural Limitations of the SME Financing Ecosystem

Over the past five years, Banxware has been at the forefront of shaping embedded lending in the German market. With digital financing solutions such as Banxware's Sofortfinanzierung and HVB FlexFinanzierung, thousands of businesses have already secured fast, digital access to the capital they need to grow, embedded in the platforms they use on a daily basis.

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, because the right financing option isn’t available at the right time and at the right price.

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 embedded 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 more than 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:

“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 at 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 origination drivers, within one coherent system.

The Orchestration Layer manages the flow between capital providers (such as banks, alternative lenders, and MCA providers on one side) and Origination Partners (including marketplaces, credit brokers, and SaaS tools 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%, while enabling teams to handle significantly higher application volumes.
• Slow time-to-market → A single integration allows new financing products to go live across multiple platforms simultaneously, shortening deployment cycles from months to days.
• Limited reach → One connection opens access to a broad base of prequalified SMEs, supported by real-time transaction and revenue data that traditional credit bureaus don’t capture.
• Regulatory and risk constraints → Traditional credit models are complemented with cashflow-based underwriting and AI-supported decisioning, improving conversion rates while strengthening risk assessment. Platform-originated SMEs consistently show better performance than traditional applicants.

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" - Martin Brinckmann, Member of the Executive Board at UniCredit

2. The Benefits for Platforms

On the other side, the Orchestration Layer provides platforms 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 Origination Partners 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, place and price.

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 capital providers, 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 & Outlook

From the beginning, Banxware’s mission has been to improve access to financing for SMEs. Our work with businesses, platforms, and capital providers has shown that while fast digital lending is essential, it cannot solve the structural challenges of SME financing on its own.

This thinking led to the Orchestration Layer, a shared 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.
• Origination Partners 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.

As the network grows, coverage expands, offers become more tailored, and access to capital becomes more reliable across industries and business sizes. Guided by deep experience in SME lending, orchestration turns fragmentation into coordination and creates lasting value for everyone involved.

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