Most Romanian business owners know this frustration: logging into three different bank apps every morning, trying to piece together their actual cash position, then switching between systems to pay suppliers.
It’s not a small problem. Romanian SMEs and start-ups typically manage between two and five business bank accounts. Each login is another tab open, another reconciliation headache, another chance for something to slip through the cracks.
Why Romanian Businesses Use Multiple Banks (And Why That Creates Problems)
The reasons are practical: one bank offers better international transfers, another has the existing credit line, a third one is required by a major client. But the result is the same – fragmented financial data scattered across platforms that don’t talk to each other.
For finance teams (or founders wearing the finance hat), this means:
- Manually checking balances across multiple accounts
- Reconciling transactions in spreadsheets
- Jumping between banking portals to initiate payments
- No single source of truth for cash flow decisions
Traditional solutions haven’t fit well. Full-scale ERP systems are overkill for most SMEs. Switching to a neobank means abandoning established banking relationships and credit histories. Most businesses just… continue juggling.
The Open Banking Solution: A Financial Control Layer
Open Banking technology is now mature enough to offer a different approach. Instead of replacing your banks, new platforms are emerging that connect to them—creating a unified financial operating system on top of your existing accounts.
This matters because your money never moves. Your banking relationships stay intact. You’re simply adding a layer of intelligence and automation that sits above your current infrastructure.
Finlayer, a platform launching in Romania, exemplifies this model. It connects to multiple Romanian and international banks through secure Open Banking APIs, giving businesses one place to see everything and act on it.
What This Actually Looks Like in Practice
Real-Time Financial Visibility
Instead of logging into four different banks, you see all accounts in one dashboard. Your actual cash position updates automatically. Transaction history from all sources is searchable in one place.
Integrated Payment Workflows
The practical benefit becomes clear when it’s time to pay invoices. Modern financial platforms let you initiate payments directly from the central interface—no switching to your bank’s portal, no copying IBANs, no wondering which account has sufficient funds.
Some platforms integrate directly with Romania’s e-factura system, automatically pulling in invoices and preparing them for payment. Others use OCR to capture data from PDF invoices, eliminating manual data entry.
Connected Invoicing
For businesses that generate invoices, the workflow becomes circular: create invoice, send it, track payment status, and see the incoming payment reflected automatically—all within the same system where you manage outgoing payments and cash flow.
Who Benefits Most From This Approach
Growing SMEs at the Spreadsheet Breaking Point
There’s a specific stage where businesses outgrow Excel-based finance management but aren’t ready for enterprise software. Revenue is growing, transaction volume is increasing, but hiring a full finance team isn’t yet justified.
This is where a financial layer platform delivers immediate value. It provides the centralization and automation that spreadsheets can’t, without the complexity or cost of traditional business finance software.
Start-ups Building Lean Operations
For start-up founders, especially those in tech, the value proposition is different: maximum automation with minimal overhead. When you’re trying to reach product-market fit, managing finances across multiple banking apps is time you’re not spending on customers.
Platforms built on Open Banking let small teams operate with the financial infrastructure of much larger companies, often without needing to hire specialized finance staff in the early stages.
The Bigger Shift: From Banking to Financial Operating Systems
What’s emerging isn’t just a better way to check bank balances. It’s a fundamental restructuring of how businesses interact with their financial infrastructure.
Traditional banks provide accounts, cards, and transaction processing. Open Banking platforms provide the operational layer—the workflows, automations, and intelligence that businesses actually need to run efficiently.
The two aren’t in competition; they’re complementary. Banks provide the regulated, secure foundation. Platforms like Finlayer provide the business logic and user experience on top.
For Romanian businesses, this evolution comes at the right time. As companies increasingly operate across borders, manage more complex payment flows, and face pressure to digitize, the old model of manually stitching together multiple banks simply doesn’t scale.
The question isn’t whether businesses will adopt these financial layer platforms, but how quickly they’ll become the standard way of managing business finances in Romania.
Ultimately, Finlayer‘s vision is to become the leading financial operating system for Romanian businesses, transforming the way they manage money, payments, and investments by bridging the gap between traditional banking and the digital future.
