The next generation of SME financial services won't be won by banking alone

Revolut is applying for a Swiss banking licence and committing CHF 150 million to Switzerland.    

As someone building a fintech here, I see this as a strong signal.    

But it also makes me think about something surprisingly basic:    

Why are SMEs still manually reconciling their bank transactions with their accounting software?    

Think about it.    

Money leaves your bank account. Then that transaction needs to be matched with an invoice, receipt or accounting entry in another system.    

We have somehow accepted this as normal. It shouldn’t be.    

When banking and accounting live together, reconciliation shouldn’t really be a “feature”. It should simply happen.    

And that leads to my biggest takeaway from Revolut’s announcement:    

The next generation of SME financial services won’t be won by banking alone.    

Banking tells you what is happening now. Accounting tells you what happened. Invoices tell you what should happen next.    

Bring those three together and you can do much more than move money.    

You can automate reconciliation. You can understand cash flow in real time.    

You can spot missing documents and anticipate VAT and upcoming payments.    

And eventually, you can make better decisions around credit, factoring and financing.    

That’s the opportunity I find exciting in Switzerland.    

We already have extraordinary banking infrastructure.    

Now we need to connect banking much more deeply with how SMEs actually operate.    

So I don’t see Revolut’s CHF 150 million commitment as a threat.    

I see it as another sign that Swiss financial services are entering a very interesting chapter.    

And Helvo intends to be part of it.