A bumper year for Tide: 7% of SME’s now use the business financial platform

As the UK’s leading business financial platform, Tide added 100,000 members in 2021. This was an increase of 30%, taking the total number of Tide members to almost 400,000 and making Tide the 7th largest provider of banking services to UK SMEs.

2021 also saw a boom in new UK SMEs being created, with the majority of Tide’s new members coming from new businesses. Despite having only launched in 2017, Tide has already built a 7% share of the UK SME banking market (compared to 4.75% in December 2020).

As well as reaching a record number of members, Tide reached other impressive milestones in 2021:

• Over one million invoices have now been created by members, from the Tide app, with Tide members invoicing clients and customers for over £500m
• Over £10.5 million has been lent to Tide members, through its credit partners
• £173,000 was been donated to small businesses via Tide Charity
• Tide now has 800 employees globally

Alongside its strong growth, Tide also took the major step of opening its platform to businesses with bank accounts with other providers so they can access Tide products, without having to switch current accounts. This is one of the first major examples of what open banking can do to make UK banking more competitive, and is a key strategic development for Tide.

Tide has been enormously successful in attracting new businesses, by helping them start out – helping business owners to register their businesses and open a current account quickly and easily. However, with established businesses generally not switching banking providers or having multiple banking providers, we reached the conclusion that the only material way competition can be introduced for the established businesses is to allow them to virtually switch to use the Tide platform without actually switching bank accounts. Businesses will not only be able to use services such as invoicing, but, in time, open banking will also allow them to view and make payments on their existing bank account via the Tide platform.

Oliver Prill – Tide CEO

As well as opening up its platform, Tide introduced a host of new products to help small businesses, including:

• A cash flow insights tool to help small businesses predict their future cash flow and take steps to mitigate any dips

• Tide Credit Builder – a reverse loan to help new businesses build their credit score
• Partnerships with specialist lenders, such as Funding Circle, Swoop and the British Business Bank (for Start-up loans)
• An invoice assistant, to help businesses get paid quicker with the automatic chasing of overdue invoices and auto-matching payments to the relevant invoices
• Tide Payment Links, allowing members to add a link to an invoice and get paid quickly and securely by card
• Small businesses can now register themselves for VAT and self-assessment with Tide  

In addition to a strong growth trajectory in the UK over the course of 2021, Tide has also been building out its India proposition. An initial product has been tested with friends and family, with a Beta and full-fledged launch expected in 2022.