Soldo brings together banking, admin and accounting features that allow you to keep an eye on your employees’ expenses.
Our review looks at Soldo’s features, fees, pros and cons to help you decide whether it would make your business’s (and your own) life easier.
What is Soldo?
Let’s start with what Soldo is not: Soldo isn’t a bank nor does it offer a full bank account. It calls itself a “proactive spend management solution” and it ultimately comprises:
A spending account. The account is in the name of the company and it can be used to allocate money to various employees, who will use it for their expenses. If an employee’s expenses follow somewhat of a regular pattern, you can also set up auto top-ups so that you don’t have to remember to put money on their card every month.
Prepaid Mastercard cards. You’ll give these directly to your employees and the number you get depends on the plan you choose. Since they’re prepaid cards and not debit or credit cards, you’ll only have to load them with as much money as the person you’re giving it to is expected to spend. Employees can’t go into an overdraft and you can also get virtual cards for online shopping, as well as multi-use team cards. Soldo’s cards can be in 3 different currencies: pounds, euros or dollars. Plus, there’s a fuel card for spending at fuel stations, a subscription card to help you manage renewals and cancellations on recurring expenses, and an online ad card to monitor digital ad spend.
An app to manage everything. The app comes with a series of features to help you track your spending, such as reports, receipt capture and real-time notifications. Both you and your employees can get the app.
Financial systems integration. You can integrate Soldo with accounting, travel, procurement and HR systems, to save time.
Soldo was founded in 2015 and is currently available in the UK, in Italy and in the rest of the European Economic Area.
How does Soldo work?
Once you’ve signed up, you need to top up your Soldo account via bank transfer from your company’s main account. You can then start organising your expenses.
From the app you can create several users, provide your employees with a prepaid card and start allocating money.
Your employees will be able to add the picture of the receipt to a transaction and to tag it according to a set of categories you pick.
You’ll get a notification when something happens and also a variety of spending reports, which can be exported into spreadsheets and uploaded to your accounting software.
Soldo’s pricing and fees
Soldo currently offers 3 different pricing plans:
A Standard plan. It costs £21 per month (excluding VAT), and includes 3 users, 20 physical or virtual cards, 20 subscription or digital ad cards, 20 temporary virtual cards, 20 outbound bank transfers per month, standard receipt capture, standard reporting and standard integrations.
A Plus plan. For £33 per month (excluding VAT), you can get everything in the Standard plan and more, including 30 cards, rather than 20, for each category, 30 outbound bank transfers per month, multi-currency support, team cards for up to 3 users, and expense review workflows.
An Enterprise plan. If you have a large organisation, you can contact sales to discuss enhanced options, including unlimited cards and bank transfers.
You must also expect:
One-off fees for each new card. £5 for a physical card that will be shipped to you, £1 for a virtual one you can start using immediately.
ATM withdrawal fees. 1% (minimum £2) each time one of your employees withdraws cash.
Currency exchange fees. They’re fixed at 1% of the transaction amount.
Bank transfer fees. Transferring money from your Soldo account to another bank account costs 75p in the UK. Soldo will charge you up to €1.50 for SEPA money transfers in Europe and £20 for international transfers.
Is Soldo suitable for your business?
Soldo offers a somewhat unique service by putting together banking and expense management, which isn’t that common among its competitors. It considers itself “ideal for small businesses” – if you’re running a big one, you’ll probably do your expense management differently rather than giving each employee who needs it a prepaid card.
Soldo can become a bit pricey if much of your business’s expenses happen abroad – its 1% foreign currency transaction fee is more competitive than most traditional banks’, but some digital-only competitors offer a full business account with fee-free spending abroad in more currencies. Revolut for Business, for example, comes in more than 30 different currencies.
Soldo’s fees and features
Product Name
Soldo
FSCS protected
Account fee
£21
UK ATM charge
1% (minimum £2)
Account software integration
Accounting integrations
QuickBooks, Xero
Additional cards
20 additional cards
Additional card fee
Plastic = £5 Virtual = £1
Requires credit check
Credit check
Key benefits
Spending limits, real time notifications, company cards
Overdraft
Freeze card from app or online banking
Instant notifications
Interest rate
0%
Current account switch guarantee
Doing business overseas with Soldo
Product Name
Soldo
Overseas transaction charge
A flat 1% FX fee for any transaction in the non-domestic currency
Overseas ATM charge
Card denominated in £ withdrawal in other currency = £2, € to € = €2, $ to $ = $2
Is Soldo safe?
Soldo isn’t a bank, but it is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and has an electronic money licence. However, your deposits are not protected by the FSCS (Financial Services Compensation Scheme).
Customers’ money is kept in segregated accounts, which means that if something happens to Soldo, that money can’t be used to pay its creditors.
Finally, if any of the prepaid cards are lost or stolen, you can block them instantly from the app.
Pros and cons of Soldo
Pros
It brings together banking and expense management
Variety of different cards with different benefits
Useful tracking features to help you stay on top of your expenses
Data can be exported into your accounting software
Virtual cards for hyper-safe online shopping
It comes with both an app and a web interface
Cons
ATM withdrawal and foreign currency transaction fees on top of the monthly one
You still need a regular business bank account for most of your financial needs
Still safe, but not FSCS-protected
Customer service information for Soldo
Email support
Telephone support
In-app or live chat
Contact form
Branch support
Bottom line
Soldo isn’t meant to be a bank, so you really shouldn’t use it to manage your day-to-day business banking – it would be impractical.
However, it’s a tailored and smart solution for expense management, and if you need that, it’s probably a good investment. If you have a set of employees you often have to give your business debit card to, Soldo can save you a lot of trouble. Many business accounts are only conceived with a single user in mind, so Soldo’s different approach may be what you’re looking for. The prepaid cards can be personalised with the employee’s name, so everything will be crystal clear and well-organised.
On the other hand, Soldo won’t be necessary if you’re the one doing most of the spending – a regular business account will probably do just fine.
Get started by visiting Soldo's website and sign up for an account. If you have read this review and decided that Soldo’s account is not for you, you can also compare other prepaid business cards on the market.
Frequently asked questions
Via bank transfer. To begin with, you can transfer money from your company’s main account to Soldo.
That depends on the pricing plan. The standard plan gives you 20 physical or virtual Soldo cards, 20 subscription or digital ad cards and 20 temporary virtual cards.
No, it doesn’t, and you can’t go into overdraft. Always keep in mind that Soldo is not a bank.
No, you don’t.
Yes, it’s highly likely. Soldo integrates with all major accounting systems. The app has the world’s most complete application programming interface (API) connection to Xero, which is a provider of accounting software primarily for businesses. It also integrates pretty seamlessly with Quickbooks and Sage.
If you find you’re not happy with Soldo, you can withdraw your money at any time. To do so, just contact businesssupport@soldo.com with the amount that you’d like to transfer out of your account and which bank account you want to transfer the money to. As this process has to be done manually, it may take several days to complete.
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Valentina Cipriani was a writer at Finder UK. She wrote news, features and guides about banking and credit cards, helping people to improve their financial lives. She holds an MA in International Journalism.
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