By Emily Nicolle on Tuesday 27 March 2018
The European banking challenger is making its next banking move, but this time with businesses in mind.
Berlin-based Penta has announced its newest fintech “Compass”, a platform that allows incorporating businesses in Germany to deposit their share capital and open a bank account in under 24 hours.
According to Penta, incorporating a business can take up to 6-8 weeks because of the bureaucratic process of opening a bank account and registering with the correct government bodies, which is legally required in Germany. Penta’s latest proposition will allow founders to open a bank account in a process that takes less than 15 minutes, completing the whole process online for free.
This is just the first of many new features to be added to Compass, with an additional suite of products and services via a third-party network to be launched in the coming months to help founders with registration and legal issues.
“We want to help business owners register a business and open a bank account quickly and without hassle. Our goal is to completely digitize this process,” said Penta CEO Lav Odorovic.
“In an increasingly globalized world Germany is competing with other EU countries to attract business. Considering so many start-ups and businesses are coming to Germany post-Brexit and because of the technology revolution, something should be done so that Germany can facilitate an easier way to start a business.”
A recent business index placed Germany 113th in “starting a business”, making it Germany’s worst performing category. In time Penta hopes to fully digitise the process of starting a business through Compass, emulating current processes like in the UK where it is possible to start a business online within 20 minutes.
Earlier this year, the digital business banking start-up raised €2.2m in seed funding in a round led by the UK-based firm Inception Venture Capital.
