What’s next for Aria?

Insights from Clément Carrier, Co-founder & CEO @ Aria

Before launching Aria in 2020, Vincent and I experienced firsthand the challenges of being freelancers dealing with payment delays from large corporations. But we weren’t just looking to solve our own problems – we saw a fundamental shift happening in B2B payments that traditional financial systems weren’t equipped to handle.

From the beginning, we took an innovative approach. Instead of building another direct-to-freelancer solution, we chose to embed our services where freelancers were already working: B2B marketplaces. This wasn’t just a go-to-market strategy; it was our first step into what would become the future of B2B financial services.

Four years later, that vision has evolved into something far more ambitious. McKinsey’s latest report validates what we’re seeing in the market: by 2030, embedded finance will account for €100 billion in value. But beyond the numbers, this represents a fundamental shift in how businesses will access and manage capital – and we’re building the infrastructure to make it happen.

At the start of 2025, with new market opportunities emerging and our recent expansion proving successful, it’s time to share where we’re headed next.

From B2B marketplaces to ERPs and vertical SaaS

What started with marketplaces has now expanded far beyond. Today, our reach extends to vertical SaaS platforms and ERPs, enabling them to embed financial products directly into their workflows, creating new revenue streams while solving critical payment challenges for their users.

What makes this expansion so powerful is its multiplier effect. When platforms integrate our financial infrastructure, they don’t just add a feature – they transform their value proposition. Their users get seamless access to financial products within platforms they already trust, while platforms themselves unlock new revenue streams that accelerate their growth.

Alongside expanding our use cases, we’ve also broadened our reach across Europe. The UK now accounts for 40% of our revenue, complementing our strong 55% from France and 5% from other European markets.

Looking ahead to 2025, we’re doubling down on this momentum. We’re accelerating our efforts across all industries, helping more platforms transform their payment infrastructure into a strategic asset. We’re also starting to serve card issuers, providing them with the financing infrastructure they need to handle the daily gap between customer purchases and monthly settlements, and thus allowing them to offer new products to their customers.

Building bridges with banks

Banks and asset managers excel at large-scale capital deployment and sophisticated risk assessment. However, they often find it operationally challenging to serve smaller businesses efficiently. Our technology infrastructure can solve this operational challenge, enabling them to extend their reach to previously underserved segments.

This is why we’re intensifying our conversations with banks and asset managers. We see significant potential in combining their capital capacity with our technology to serve segments of the market that traditional financing methods struggle to reach effectively.

Priority to healthy growth 

Over the past 3 years, our revenue has grown fast, leading to our recognition by Sifted as the 42nd fastest-growing startup in Europe and the 12th fastest-growing fintech. But what matters more is how we got here.

In a risk-heavy industry, we cannot accept every company that approaches us. Managing operational, credit, and fraud risks has been our biggest win in 2024, directly impacting our financing terms and margins.

Supporting this growth while maintaining our standards required significant organizational evolution. Scaling responsibly meant evolving our team from 20 to 40 people while safeguarding our culture of disciplined risk management. One hard-earned lesson? Rushed hiring is costly. Our most expensive mistakes came from poor recruitment. Taking our time to hire right paid off.

But that’s not it. Doubling the team also brought a new challenge: adding structure without losing agility. More people required structure, especially in Sales, Risk, and Compliance. But too much structure creates silos. Finding this balance – between necessary frameworks and staying nimble – is the true art of scaling a fintech.

We are driven not just by growth, but by healthy growth.

At the dawn of embedded finance

We are in a fundamental shift in how financial services are delivered. Software platforms will be the ones distributing tomorrow’s financial products. It represents a major opportunity for software companies to introduce new revenue streams into their business models. As users increasingly seek integrated financial experiences, platforms can transform their value proposition through embedded finance.

Building for 2025 and beyond

For 2025, our priorities are clear. We’re expanding our sales team and targeting larger clients like major ERP and TMS providers. But growth alone isn’t enough – profitability remains a central focus and is well within our reach.

The foundation we built in 2024 – from our risk management systems to our organizational structure – has prepared us well for this next chapter. We’re not just growing; we’re growing with purpose, and that makes all the difference.

The opportunity before us is clear: software platforms are becoming the natural home for financial services. But success in this space isn’t just about technology – it’s about building trust, managing risk effectively, and creating sustainable value for all participants in our ecosystem.

That’s why our focus for 2025 goes beyond mere growth metrics. We’re investing in our risk management capabilities, strengthening our partnerships with financial institutions, and enhancing our product to support increasingly complex use cases. Every move we make is guided by our commitment to building a lasting infrastructure for the future of B2B payments.