This article is a part of Poland Unpacked. Weekly intelligence for decision-makers
A large market with limited competition, or a fast march alongside a partner? PragmaGO is testing two expansion models in Spain and Croatia. CEO Tomasz Boduszek gives XYZ an inside look at the company’s international push, discusses its next target markets and previews a new product that could shake up Poland’s market.
Either choose a large market with moderate competition, or follow a pan-European partner step for step. Polish company PragmaGO, which specializes in lending and factoring, has tested both expansion strategies with its launches in Spain and Croatia – and is now setting its sights on additional countries. As CEO Tomasz Boduszek tells XYZ, key decisions on the Polish company’s further international expansion could be made within the next few weeks.
PragmaGO gains momentum in Spain
The fintech entered the Spanish market at the beginning of 2026. It has a registered local entity, PragmaGO Spain, with a total of five employees, while operations are also supported by a team in Poland. In the first quarter, it began working with Qonto, a provider of business banking accounts and other services for companies. Together, the two companies launched PragmaCash, a Merchant Cash Advance (MCA) product that provides financing to merchants, repaid from their future sales.
This is an embedded-finance model, in which financial services are integrated directly into the platforms and applications of non-financial companies serving the SME sector.
How is it going? So far, the business has several dozen customers and says its conversion rate – the share of applicants who ultimately receive financing - is exceptionally high. The next step is to make the product available to Qonto’s entire customer base in Spain, which should happen soon. What comes next?
“Between late June and early July, we launched with a second partner, Glovo, a platform that connects restaurants, stores and other outlets with customers ordering meals and individual products. For now, we are running a pilot, but we expect to start offering financing to the entire customer base as early as the third quarter. Given Glovo’s scale, we see enormous potential there – considerably more than with Qonto,” says Tomasz Boduszek.
In Spain, the average financing amount is €15,000 (about PLN 64,000), although in cooperation with Glovo the company is prepared to provide amounts up to ten times higher. For now, the fintech is taking a selective approach to larger exposures, basing decisions on risk and the scale of the business. At the same time, it is testing several data sources to feed its proprietary risk-assessment model. After a year, it should be possible to evaluate which databases deliver the best results. Ultimately, PragmaGO could work with one or two providers in this area.
Its goal is a loan portfolio worth tens of millions of euros
Our source acknowledges that PragmaGO faces little competition in Spain’s MCA market. That means the Polish company could even become a leader in this segment. It is already working on additional partnerships. It is in advanced talks with an accounting-services platform used by tens of thousands of companies. It is also talking to providers of payment terminals. This is somewhat more challenging, as banks often handle such services directly. Banks, in turn, are reluctant to hand financing over to third parties and prefer to manage it themselves. PragmaGO is therefore developing a solution to address this challenge: when working with terminal providers, it would act as the operator and servicer of the MCA business, while the bank itself would provide the financing.
“In a few years, we would like to have a loan portfolio in Spain worth tens of millions of euros. We are optimistic because MCA is easy to scale, and we will gradually increase our limits as we gain a better understanding of our customers’ needs,” says Tomasz Boduszek.
PragmaGO may also add another product to its Spanish offering next year: invoice financing, or factoring. The aim is to give customers access to an increasingly broad range of services. The company is not, however, considering buy now, pay later (BNPL), which has worked well in Poland. The reason is simple: average financing amounts under this product are relatively small, meaning it could take considerably longer to reach profitability.
Croatia is waiting for launch, with two partners already on board
Croatia is at a somewhat earlier stage. PragmaGO already has a locally registered company there, but unlike in Spain, the fintech is serving Croatian customers directly from Poland. The company has already signed its first two partnership agreements. One is with a card-payment operator and the other with an accounting platform. It is still too early to disclose their names.
“With the first partner, we are already working on programming the services because we envisage deep integration of MCA into the partner’s ecosystem. In the ‘zero’ phase, customers can see the entire process, check the cost of financing and sign up for the waiting list. We want to launch the first financing at the turn of the third and fourth quarters of 2026, and ramp up fully in spring 2027. With the second partner, we plan to start working together around the end of the year,” Tomasz Boduszek says.
Croatia is, of course, a much smaller market than Spain. But it puts into practice an approach based on partners’ needs: following them into markets where they require a particular service. Interestingly, PragmaGO does not even have anyone to race against in Croatia, as there are no local companies specializing in financing for merchants.
What’s next? Portugal, Greece and Italy are on the radar
Spain and Croatia are not the only foreign markets where PragmaGO operates. At the end of 2024, the fintech completed the acquisition of Romania’s Telecredit IFN. It now operates under the PragmaGO Romania brand and specializes in digital factoring. The business is gaining scale: in 2025, revenue from the Romanian market already accounted for 17.6% of PragmaGO’s group revenue.
“Our international operations will become increasingly visible in our financial results, while the share of lending products that we are taking into other countries will continue to increase as a percentage of our revenue mix,” our source says.
Alongside expanding its services across all three foreign markets, PragmaGO already has several more countries in its sights where it could launch in the coming quarters. Portugal is one example. Entering the market is somewhat more challenging because it requires a local lending license and an investment structure. Decisions on how to enter the market are expected in the coming weeks. Once the details are settled, the company will register a local entity.
The next market is Greece, where, as in Portugal and Croatia, PragmaGO could pursue an entry strategy built around a strong partnership. If it had to enter independently, it would not choose the Greek market. With a large, well-known partner - in this case, a payment operator - the opportunity makes much more sense.
Italy is next on the radar. The challenge? The market is large, but PragmaGO would need to obtain a license and contend with restrictions on financing costs. That means the company may have to work harder than in other markets to achieve high profitability. A decision on whether PragmaGO will enter Italy is expected by the end of the year.
Polish fintech keeps acquisitions on the table
As our source points out, international expansion is easier because the company enters each market with the same product, its own IT system and a broadly consistent approach to risk and distribution. The latter is based primarily on partnering with other companies and rewarding them for generating financing business. In other words, PragmaGO does not independently and directly seek out companies to which it can offer capital.
“This means that opening a new market does not require such a large investment of money or time. We do not need to build local structures or spend millions on marketing. We can scale the business at a relatively low cost. That makes it possible to enter several markets at the same time, rather than waiting to become profitable in one market before moving on to a second country,” explains Tomasz Boduszek.
He does not rule out acquisitions. That option remains on the table. It makes the most sense in markets where a license is required, as acquiring a licensed entity could significantly accelerate the launch. Acquisitions will also be considered where there are attractive targets but PragmaGO sees little potential for entering the market organically - for example, because embedded finance services are already highly saturated. In such cases, PragmaGO could acquire a significant player in the market, with a potential investment of several tens of millions of euros.
Poland still has potential, with new products in the pipeline
Importantly, international expansion does not mean the company has hit a ceiling in the Polish market. Its priority now is to broaden its offering at home. First, by increasing financing limits for creditworthy customers. The current limit is PLN 500,000 (about EUR 117,000), but from the fourth quarter the company plans to move into the larger-customer segment among PragmaGO’s partners. These customers could receive financing of up to PLN 1 million (about EUR 234,000).
The second area is a sub-product designed for customers who lack a sufficiently regular relationship with PragmaGO’s partners. This would allow the company to serve more customers, although they would initially receive relatively low financing limits. As a result, the service is not expected to have a significant impact on PragmaGO’s turnover at first.
The third area is factoring, including the launch of a new product combining features of factoring and MCA. It would allow customers to obtain financing worth up to 50% more than the value of the invoices they have issued, with the financing then repaid from the company’s sales.
“We want to use this product to build a competitive advantage and accelerate our growth. We expect this move to bring us into new customer categories that we have not served before. Ultimately, the product could be rolled out internationally, but before that happens, we want to test it in Poland,” our source says.
After record bond issue, securitization is next
According to preliminary results for the first half of 2026, the company financed receivables worth PLN 1.6 billion (about EUR 374 million). That is 9% more than a year earlier. The CEO expects the growth rate for the full year to be higher.
The company finances its operations through credit lines and bond issues. Its July debt offering attracted record investor interest. Investors submitted orders for PLN 147 million (about EUR 34.4 million) worth of securities - 84% more than the company needed.
PragmaGO is now also preparing its first-ever securitization. The transaction is essentially in the final stages. It will not only increase and diversify the company’s funding sources, but also reduce the group’s overall debt by refinancing existing loans. The securitized portfolios will be removed from PragmaGO’s balance sheet, while the entity financing the transaction will assume the full risk. In this case, the transaction will involve an amount in the tens of millions of zlotys.
Expert's perspective
The challenge is building a repeatable sales model while maintaining portfolio quality and profitability
The real challenge is building a repeatable sales model while maintaining portfolio quality and profitability at the same time. PragmaGO has chosen the safest route: rather than starting by building a local structure and spending heavily on marketing, it enters through partners that already have relationships with thousands of businesses and data that can be used to assess their operations. This shortens the path to the customer and significantly reduces customer-acquisition costs.
Spain will be the most important test of this strategy. If partnerships with Qonto and Glovo deliver scale, portfolio quality and profitability at the same time, it will demonstrate that PragmaGO can export its entire embedded-finance model, rather than just a single product.
It is important to remember, however, that a partnership strategy does not eliminate risk; it merely shifts some of it. The company becomes dependent on a handful of platforms that control access to customers. Lending and factoring products are also far more local in nature than, for example, payments or foreign-exchange services.
I learned this when I was introducing trade-finance services at Ebury. What works extremely well in the United Kingdom does not necessarily represent the optimal solution in Poland. The basic product concept can be transferred, but nuances involving creditworthiness assessments, scoring, collections and pricing policy cannot simply be copied from one market to another. Local standards, customer expectations and their loyalty to incumbent providers can have a significant impact on how financial services need to be localized. In such cases, having an in-house sales team may prove a better solution than relying on a partner network.
Key Takeaways
- Scaling through embedded finance cuts costs: PragmaGO is basing its expansion on deep integration of its proprietary IT technology with external partner platforms, including Glovo and Qonto. This allows it to avoid the cost of building local sales structures and spending heavily on marketing, giving the company the flexibility to enter several markets at the same time.
- A two-track geographic strategy and product flexibility: The fintech is pursuing two growth models: targeting large markets with limited competition in lending niches, such as Spain and Italy, while also following the needs of key partners into smaller markets, including Croatia, Greece and Portugal. The model is further supported by plans to acquire companies with local licenses.
- Reshaping funding and easing the balance sheet: The company is meeting its growing need for capital not only through successful bond issues with high oversubscription, but also through its first-ever portfolio securitization. The transaction will allow it to transfer risk to an external partner, reduce leverage ratios and create room for further expansion.