How Lexware turned financing into a native customer experience with Banxware
From accounting to payroll to inventory, and now financing: with Banxware’s embedded lending solution, Lexware gives the self-employed and small businesses fast, digital access to capital, integrated directly into the software they use to run their day-to-day operations.
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A market leader in SME software, serving over 600,000 German companies since 1989.
Lexware has pursued a clear mission from the very beginning: to make entrepreneurship simple.
The company started in 1989 as a small startup in an apartment in Freiburg, Germany. Over time, it grew from early commercial software into a full suite for freelancers and small businesses. Its tools combine accounting, invoicing, payroll, inventory management, and financial reporting to help reduce the administrative work of running a business.
Today, more than 600,000 SMEs of different sizes and industries rely on Lexware. What once began with desktop software has evolved into cloud platforms such as Lexware Office. In doing so, the company is increasingly shifting from a pure software provider into a digital companion that brings the right partners together within an ecosystem, enabling entrepreneurs to manage their entire business on a single platform.
One part of running a business still happened outside Lexware: getting funded.
For most small companies, access to capital is one of the biggest barriers to growth. The self-employed regularly face short-term funding needs, whether an investment, a liquidity gap or the next step in scaling, yet traditional financing processes are often too slow and too complex for businesses of this size.
For a platform built to make entrepreneurship simple, that was a gap. Simplifying administration alone is not enough if entrepreneurs are still blocked from taking the next step in their growth journey.
To truly support small businesses, Lexware needed to go further and start enabling growth by giving fast access to capital.
At that time, financing still took place outside the platform, which resulted in significant disadvantages for the platform.
Customer Churn
When customers needed capital, they had to look beyond Lexware to get it, often at a business-critical moment. Each time, the platform lost a chance to deepen the relationship and keep customers close.
Incomplete Offering
For all the ground Lexware covered, financing was the one service it could not yet offer. That left a gap in its ambition to be a true all-in-one platform for running a business.
Rising Expectations
Small businesses increasingly expect financing to be built into the software they already use, available digitally and in context. Without it, both platform engagement and customer loyalty were at risk.
For Velolease, these challenges were part of everyday business.
Velolease, founded by Kai Nüchter, helps mid-sized companies offer their employees a company bike model with real added value, in his words “without cost, without effort and without risk.” The business grew out of a classic bike retailer and, to scale beyond its own region, needed its own digital leasing platform.
Building that infrastructure took serious investment, all while goods for the bike trade still had to be pre-financed and day-to-day operations carried on as usual. The opportunity to grow was there; the capital for the next step was not.
With Banxware, Lexware made financing a native part of its platform.
The way it works is simple: A newly introduced "Financing Partners" button right inside the dashboard allows business customers to explore financing in a few clicks, from the same place they manage their accounting and day-to-day finances.
Behind that button sits a financing hub that Lexware built to connect several lenders, with Banxware among them. Through Banxware's cooperation with HypoVereinsbank, a single integration covers financing needs from €1,000 up to €5 million, for businesses of every size and across every industry. And because larger financing requests come at bank-level pricing, choosing Lexware simply means more convenience without trading away the terms a bank would offer.
With embedded lending, Lexware turned what was once an external process into a seamless in-platform service with clear benefits for both customers and the platform.
The benefit for Velolease
For Velolease, financing via the Lexware dashboard meant that the required capital was available in the business account within just a few days after submitting the application.
This enabled the company to build its planned leasing platform and optimize its leasing operations. A process that previously took 15 to 20 minutes per order now takes just 2 to 3 minutes. For Kai, this created a new structural foundation to scale the company bike model far beyond regional borders.
Embedded lending for platforms
Go live without dev resources.
Our embeddable lending product lets you start offering loans immediately — without interrupting your business.
Provide tailored loans from 1k-5M EUR.
Banxware uses transactional data to offer instant personalized loans and credit lines in partnership with UniCredit.
We manage the loan process from start to finish.
You deliver an exceptional financing experience without any risk. Banxware handles every step of the application and loan management process, plus all regulatory compliance — while you earn a commission and your customers’ loyalty.
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Stronger Market Position
With financing built in, Lexware closed the last major gap in its offering. From accounting to capital, it now covers the full arc of running a business, reinforcing its position as a true all-in-one platform.
Deeper Customer Loyalty
Customers no longer leave Lexware to fund their next step. Keeping that business-critical moment on the platform deepens relationships and keeps customers engaged for longer.
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Broader Financing Coverage
A single integration with Banxware enables financing from €1,000 to €5 million across industries, covering a far wider range of business needs than many individual lenders.