Abillio is a payments gateway for the growing gig economy that lets freelancers and gig workers use its 'Company-as-a-service' solution to invoice their cross-border customers and get fast payouts for their services, while Abillio takes care of running the company, accounting, taxes and paperwork.  

Abillio, based in Riga, Latvia, launched its digital platform in the spring of 2021 and has experienced a rapid growth since then. While the growth is a good thing, it also has put a heavy load on the invoice and payment processing power since Abillio initially relied on human operators to get the job done. Aiia's open banking solution is a perfect match to solve this ever growing problem. “We learned about Aiia through the Mastercard's Lighthouse FINITIV program, where we got accepted in the fall of this year. Our service has received a wide popularity amongst the Latvian freelancers. As we are planning to launch in other EU countries, it would not be possible to make our platform scalable without the open banking solutions that Aiia offers, plus they have a dedicated SMB growth program, which is a great opportunity for small startup companies like ours,” explains Martins Vilums, the co-founder and CMO of Abillio, “Aiia's wide connection to the Baltic and EU banks, has enabled us to access the banking data of incoming payments and to automate the payout initialization, so we can save our valuable human resources for more important, non-routine tasks.”

Commenting further on the collaboration, Tanya Slavova, Director of Fintech from the open banking platform Aiia says “We’re thrilled to empower Abillio on their journey to create a quick, convenient and cost effective bookkeeping process for freelancers with easy access to financial data. Abillio is transforming the way of running a small business, allowing their customers to focus on their core business and leave the invoicing and taxing hassle behind.” And adds: “At Aiia we’re keen to keep empowering the promising Latvian financial services industry with open banking which is also why we’ve opened up for access to our growth programme, letting SMB’s and start-ups leverage open banking for free in a 6-months period. Abillio is a perfect example of a forward-thinking Latvian start-up increasing customer convenience with through open banking" 

“The automation of time consuming manual tasks means speeding up payments, which means less customer churn. According to our research, 72% of freelancers prefer the same day payments, so this is essential for us,” adds M. Vilums.

There are 20 million estimated freelancers in the EU - that is 10% of the total employment. Abillio is targeting freelancers and independent creators like web & software developers, designers, 3D animators, film production people, tutors, creative service providers, marketing consultants, and others for whom running a solo business means burdensome paperwork, time-consuming formalities and dealing with taxes. Abillio's mission is to remove all barriers to run solo businesses for freelancers and gig workers, ultimately aiming to become a neobank for freelancers by adding more financial tools for the gig economy in the near future.