ANNA.Money expands UK offering with Expense Management and leaps into Australia with acquisition of Cape

Ryan Edwards-Pritchard
March 14, 2024

Cape is excited to announce that we've been acquired by Anna.Money, a UK based AI powered all-in-one financial admin platform for SMEs and freelancers.

The acquisition signals ANNA’s aim to create a new SaaS (software as a service) category to take on Australia’s ‘big four’ banks, ANZ, CommBank, NAB and Westpac, offering expense management and corporate cards designed to save small businesses time and money.

ANNA's first acqisition

This move marks founder-owned Anna.Money's first acquisition and first in an international market. With the acquisition of cape, Anna.Money will move beyond its primary product of a Tax assistant and business current account as we explore the burgeoning Spend Management category occupied by cape as this is forecast to reach $46USD Billion by 2030. 

The expansion also signals the first step for the UK-based Anna.Money’s goal of supporting small businesses worldwide with its cutting-edge technology and user-friendly platform.

New products

Eduard Panteleev, Co-CEO of Anna.Money, says: "This acquisition is a monumental step in our journey and we’re so excited to be joining Australia’s dynamic startup landscape. 

Chasing receipts and handling reconciliations is a huge pain point, especially when it comes to businesses not claiming back their VAT in the UK or GST in Australia. Which is why ANNA wants to go deeper into the customer problem space by solving the more manual tasks with the deployment of our AI and automation capabilities in new areas to help customers save more time and money. 

Integrating Cape’s tooling into our existing platform will accelerate our expansion into Expense Management and Corporate Cards in the UK. 

Whilst we also roll out our existing product set into Australia which includes a smart business current account that encapsulates tax calculations, tax filing, B2B payments, invoicing, business registration & accounting.

Ryan Edwards-Pritchard, Founder and CEO of Cape who will stay on in the newly created role of CEO of ANNA.Money Australia commented, "Our goal was to deliver a 10X SaaS first B2B payments solution for our customers. Joining forces with Anna.Money is a huge step forward on that mission given the ability to integrate our software IP with their trusted platform. This will all be delivered via a best-in-class ChatGPT-style AI assistant that provides business owners with all of the power of a finance team, just without the unnecessary headcount. 

About Cape

Founded in 2020, Cape is a business spend management platform that issues corporate cards designed to help companies strengthen their cash flow. It provides businesses with full visibility and control over purchasing to cut wasteful spending and the time taken on financial administration work related to expense management. In 2022 cape launched a free corporate card with 0% FX fees on the front end, powered by real-time expense management software. cape was one of three Australian startups selected from 3,000 global applications to take part in 2023’s TechCrunch Startup Battlefield event at Disrupt in San Francisco.

About ANNA.Money

Anna.Money is an AI-powered business account and tax app designed to streamline financial management for small businesses, supporting more than 100,000 UK businesses. Anna.Money’s vision is to make life easier for small businesses owners, to take out the boring admin so they can focus on growing their businesses. From generating invoices on command to chasing payments, receipt scanning and helping to set aside the right amount of money for tax. Anna.Money won “Best Application of AI or ML in Financial Services” at the 2023 Card and Payments Awards. The company continues to pioneer the use of AI, machine learning and Large Language Models (LLMs) to make things simpler and easier for small businesses across the UK, and now Australia. With the acquisition of Cape, Anna.Money will soon add expense management and credit cards to its UK customers.

Ryan Edwards-Pritchard
March 14, 2024