For SpeedLedger, banking has never been an add-on. It is the foundation the entire product is built on. And when your entire product depends on bank connections working flawlessly, you need a partner built for depth.
"Our bookkeeping simply doesn't work without a bank connection," says Therese Lagnell Janson, Product Owner. "A robust bank connection is the foundation that enables our core differentiator, and all transactions that happen in the bank are what we build the bookkeeping on.”
That approach makes automation possible – but only if bank connections are stable.
Broken connections costing time
Before partnering with Open Payments, SpeedLedger relied on several different banking solutions, each with its own quirks, maintenance requirements, and points of failure. Customers often had to authenticate frequently with BankID, and transaction retrieval involved more manual steps.
This wasn't just a technical inconvenience. For SpeedLedger's target audience – sole traders and micro-businesses running their dream ventures – every moment spent wrestling with broken connections was time stolen from their actual business.
"Bookkeeping is secondary for our customers," explains Åsa Fredriksson, Head of Growth. "It's a necessary evil. Our ambition is to make it as automatic and simplified as possible so they can focus on their operations instead. They want it to just sort itself out."
A clear requirement: stability first
When SpeedLedger evaluated alternatives, the requirements were uncompromising. "We looked at quite a few different types of providers beyond Open Payments who claimed to offer these services," recalls Therese. "But when we started scratching the surface, it became clear that others lacked the licenses and functionality we needed, especially in combination with broad bank coverage.
Today, SpeedLedger uses Open Payments for both account information and payments. For customers using Swedbank and Nordea, SpeedLedger retrieves transaction data via premium bank APIs through direct bank partnerships. For all other banks, Open Payments' Open Banking infrastructure provides secure, automated access to account and transaction data.
When new customers are onboarded, they select their bank, authenticate with BankID and choose which accounts to synchronise. From that point on, transactions flow into SpeedLedger automatically and continuously. Customers only need to re-authenticate every 180 days.
“That alone is a huge improvement for our users,” the Åsa notes. “Far fewer manual steps.”
SpeedLedger also enables supplier payments directly inside the accounting flow. Payments and bookkeeping happen in the same place, without customers needing to log into their bank separately.
Automation saves time and money
The real transformation, however, goes deeper than operational improvements. Open Payments has become a key enabler of SpeedLedger's core differentiator, auto-accounting, by improving how bank transactions flow into existing bookkeeping logic.
“That level of automation would be impossible without reliable bank connections. It's really the heart of our product,” says Therese.
Most of SpeedLedger's users are running very small businesses, and bookkeeping is rarely something they want to spend time or money on. Åsa explains:
"Customers save a tremendous amount of time, but also money. Traditional accounting programmes without much automation often require help from an accounting consultant. And that's very expensive. But most of our customers don't need help from an accounting consultant – just because it's so automated."
Preparing for what comes next
SpeedLedger highlights the collaboration with Open Payments as a key part of the partnership.
"We've been incredibly satisfied. During the development phase, we had very close technical dialogue,” Therese says. “And today we have a shared Slack channel, which makes a big difference when something needs to be solved quickly.” For Åsa, the true value of the partnership lies in what it enables going forward.
"Open Payments is the fundamental prerequisite for future automation and things we want to do ahead," she explains. "The core needs to be in place, something we can rely on, so we can build for the future.”
