The evolution of expense management tools in 2026

Findity's State of Expense Management 2026 report says 76% of employees still manage expenses using tools that are not optimal, indicating continued inefficiency across nine European markets. The report covers the Nordics, UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and France, and frames expense management as an area still in transition rather than one with a clear market leader. The article is informational and company-specific, with limited near-term market impact.

Analysis

This is less a pure software adoption story than a control-point shift in corporate finance. Expense management sits in the middle of AP, card issuance, reimbursement, VAT recovery, and policy enforcement, so low digitization leaves a lot of latent revenue for incumbents in payments, enterprise software, and embedded finance to capture through higher attach rates rather than standalone seat growth. The biggest beneficiaries are vendors that can own the workflow end-to-end; point solutions are vulnerable because CFOs will increasingly bundle spend controls with existing ERP, treasury, and card programs to reduce vendor sprawl.

The second-order effect is on banks and card networks: if expense tooling remains fragmented, banks lose the data layer that drives card interchange stickiness and working-capital lending insight. Conversely, if embedded providers win share, they can disintermediate traditional T&E processors and push more volume onto proprietary rails, which is a margin problem for legacy players but a monetization opportunity for fintech enablers. The market likely underestimates how slow enterprise migration can be: this is a multi-year conversion cycle, so the near-term earnings impact is mostly in pipeline quality and CAC efficiency, not immediate revenue.

The contrarian view is that "manual expenses" are not always a market failure; in small and mid-market firms, the ROI threshold is higher than vendors assume, and adoption can stall once the easiest customers are converted. That means growth rates for pure-play expense tech may decelerate before profitability inflects. The catalyst to watch is not consumer awareness but procurement refresh cycles and ERP replacements over the next 6-18 months; if macro softens, CFOs may still approve automation if it can be framed as headcount avoidance and VAT leakage recovery rather than software spend.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Overweight diversified payments/expense platforms with embedded distribution over standalone expense apps; prefer names with existing bank/ERP channels and 18-24 month upgrade cycles, as they can capture share without heavy CAC escalation.
• If accessible, long a basket of European enterprise software enablers that sit in AP/workflow automation and short a basket of legacy T&E processors on a 6-12 month horizon; the spread should widen as procurement teams consolidate vendors.
• Use any post-earnings pullback in pure-play expense fintechs to build only tactical longs, not core positions; the risk/reward is capped if customer conversion saturates faster than consensus expects.
• Watch for partnership announcements with ERP and card issuers as the highest-conviction catalyst; those deals can rerate growth assumptions within 1-2 quarters if they imply lower churn and higher attach rates.