The Future Isn’t Simply More Automation; It’s Trusted AI to Free Teams for Value Creation
Aspire’s Co-founder and CEO Andrea Baronchelli tells Sanghamitra Mandal why corporate banking alone is no longer enough and how AI and agentic ERP are reshaping the finance stack for global businesses.
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Singapore-based fintech behemoth Aspire is building what it believes will become the next major category in business finance: an AI-native financial operating system that S combines corporate banking and finance software into a single platform. The company was founded in 2018 by Andrea Baronchelli and Giovanni Casinelli, built specifically for globally ambitious businesses. It helps them manage the complexity of operating across multiple markets, bringing multi-currency accounts, FX, payments, accounting, expense management, procurement and treasury into one platform.
Eight years on, Aspire serves more than 50,000 businesses across Asia and beyond. As companies increasingly build, hire and sell internationally from day one, Aspire’s ambition is to become the financial operating system that powers the next generation of global businesses. It now operates in Singapore, Hong Kong and the USA, with further global expansion already underway.
Aspire places strong emphasis on compliance, securing licences well ahead of entering new markets and working closely within the frameworks that govern them. In this highly regulated finance industry, it sees the rules themselves as a competitive advantage and a foundation for long-term trust. Edited excerpts:
Aspire calls itself an all-in-one finance operating system. For a CFO drowning in separate tools for cards, payroll and reconciliation, how does this help? Is the software becoming a CFO?
Most finance teams are still operating a fragmented stack. Cards sit in one system, payroll in another, accounting somewhere else and cash spreads across multiple bank accounts. As a result, around 80% of finance workflows remain manual, leaving teams without a real-time view of cash, a single source of truth, or consistent controls across the business.
An all-in-one finance operating system changes that. By bringing banking, payments, expenses, procurement, accounting and treasury together on a single platform, finance teams gain real-time visibility into their financial position, along with standardised controls and automation they can trust.
That foundation is what makes AI genuinely useful. If your financial information is fragmented across multiple systems, AI amplifies that complexity. But when everything sits within a unified operating system, AI can surface insights, answer questions, automate routine workflows and help finance teams make faster, better-informed decisions.
The goal is not to replace the CFO. It is to give finance leaders fewer spreadsheets, fewer manual processes and more time to focus on the strategic decisions that drive growth.
With AspireX now directly catering to banks while safeguarding client funds, you work collaboratively. But where do traditional banks stop and where does Aspire’s software take over?
Legacy financial systems were not designed for today’s global companies. Fast-growing businesses are managing entities across multiple markets, suppliers around the world and increasingly complex finance operations. But they are still forced to stitch together separate tools for banking, expenses, procurement, accounting and treasury.
Aspire is rewriting those decades-old workflows by bringing corporate banking together with AI-powered finance automation in a single, trusted platform. We have spent eight years building licences and payment network integrations that provide the underlying infrastructure. What we are building on top of it is a fundamentally better way for businesses to interact with the corporate finance function. Instead of switching between disconnected systems, finance teams have one place to manage cash, control spend, automate routine work and gain real-time visibility across their business.
Early ASEAN fintech was about consumer products like digital wallets. Today, you talk a lot about building finance directly into everyday business software. Is the next major phase of B2B fintech about automating back-office finance so founders rarely have to think about it?
The future of B2B fintech is not simply more automation. Finance teams today still spend far too much time chasing approvals, reconciling transactions, processing invoices and moving information between disconnected systems. Those are repetitive, rules-based workflows that AI can handle far more efficiently.
For us, the bigger opportunity is to build finance directly into the way businesses operate, so that routine tasks happen automatically in the background. Meanwhile, finance teams can focus on higher-value work like planning, cash strategy and growth. But automation only works if it is trusted. Finance teams need to know that AI is operating within clear controls, with the right permissions, governance and visibility. That’s where the industry is heading and it’s the future we are building for.
Aspire’s AI tools now handle tasks like real-time cash visibility, receipt matching and month-end closing — tasks that once needed a whole team. Which areas of a CFO’s daily operations can genuinely be fully automated today, and which will always need a human?
AI is undoubtedly changing the finance function by taking on more operations that traditionally consumed finance teams. But finance is also one of the most regulated and risk-sensitive functions in any business. Every financial decision carries implications for governance, compliance and accountability. As a result, finance teams have a much lower tolerance for error than many other business functions.
That’s why I see AI augmenting the CFO’s team. It can surface insights faster, execute routine workflows and reduce manual effort. But decisions around capital allocation, risk, strategy, regulatory compliance and ultimately signing off on the numbers will continue to require human judgement and oversight. The opportunity isn’t to remove people from finance. It’s to free them from repetitive work so they can spend more time on the decisions that create value.
When a business expands across ASEAN, it runs into diverse currencies, tax laws and banking regulations. Which financial process usually breaks first and how do new-generation B2B fintechs fix them?
In our experience, spend tracking and visibility usually break first as businesses navigate multiple bank accounts and corporate cards across geographies. As a result, finance teams no longer have a real-time view of where money is being spent, how much cash is available across the group, or how efficiently capital is being deployed.
Opening local accounts can also take months, slowing expansion. And when a business finally has this in place, bank accounts in each country require separate logins and manual downloads for reconciliation. Meanwhile, traditional accounting software is not optimised for multi-geo and entity consolidation, creating friction for finance teams.
Today, corporate banking alone doesn’t work anymore. Ambitious businesses expect software, automation and insight. Traditional banks can’t move fast enough to adapt and finance software companies can’t replace regulated financial infrastructure. The future lies in bringing corporate banking and agentic ERP into one platform.
Singapore-based fintech behemoth Aspire is building what it believes will become the next major category in business finance: an AI-native financial operating system that S combines corporate banking and finance software into a single platform. The company was founded in 2018 by Andrea Baronchelli and Giovanni Casinelli, built specifically for globally ambitious businesses. It helps them manage the complexity of operating across multiple markets, bringing multi-currency accounts, FX, payments, accounting, expense management, procurement and treasury into one platform.
Eight years on, Aspire serves more than 50,000 businesses across Asia and beyond. As companies increasingly build, hire and sell internationally from day one, Aspire’s ambition is to become the financial operating system that powers the next generation of global businesses. It now operates in Singapore, Hong Kong and the USA, with further global expansion already underway.
Aspire places strong emphasis on compliance, securing licences well ahead of entering new markets and working closely within the frameworks that govern them. In this highly regulated finance industry, it sees the rules themselves as a competitive advantage and a foundation for long-term trust. Edited excerpts:
Aspire calls itself an all-in-one finance operating system. For a CFO drowning in separate tools for cards, payroll and reconciliation, how does this help? Is the software becoming a CFO?
Most finance teams are still operating a fragmented stack. Cards sit in one system, payroll in another, accounting somewhere else and cash spreads across multiple bank accounts. As a result, around 80% of finance workflows remain manual, leaving teams without a real-time view of cash, a single source of truth, or consistent controls across the business.
An all-in-one finance operating system changes that. By bringing banking, payments, expenses, procurement, accounting and treasury together on a single platform, finance teams gain real-time visibility into their financial position, along with standardised controls and automation they can trust.
That foundation is what makes AI genuinely useful. If your financial information is fragmented across multiple systems, AI amplifies that complexity. But when everything sits within a unified operating system, AI can surface insights, answer questions, automate routine workflows and help finance teams make faster, better-informed decisions.
The goal is not to replace the CFO. It is to give finance leaders fewer spreadsheets, fewer manual processes and more time to focus on the strategic decisions that drive growth.
With AspireX now directly catering to banks while safeguarding client funds, you work collaboratively. But where do traditional banks stop and where does Aspire’s software take over?
Legacy financial systems were not designed for today’s global companies. Fast-growing businesses are managing entities across multiple markets, suppliers around the world and increasingly complex finance operations. But they are still forced to stitch together separate tools for banking, expenses, procurement, accounting and treasury.
Aspire is rewriting those decades-old workflows by bringing corporate banking together with AI-powered finance automation in a single, trusted platform. We have spent eight years building licences and payment network integrations that provide the underlying infrastructure. What we are building on top of it is a fundamentally better way for businesses to interact with the corporate finance function. Instead of switching between disconnected systems, finance teams have one place to manage cash, control spend, automate routine work and gain real-time visibility across their business.
Early ASEAN fintech was about consumer products like digital wallets. Today, you talk a lot about building finance directly into everyday business software. Is the next major phase of B2B fintech about automating back-office finance so founders rarely have to think about it?
The future of B2B fintech is not simply more automation. Finance teams today still spend far too much time chasing approvals, reconciling transactions, processing invoices and moving information between disconnected systems. Those are repetitive, rules-based workflows that AI can handle far more efficiently.
For us, the bigger opportunity is to build finance directly into the way businesses operate, so that routine tasks happen automatically in the background. Meanwhile, finance teams can focus on higher-value work like planning, cash strategy and growth. But automation only works if it is trusted. Finance teams need to know that AI is operating within clear controls, with the right permissions, governance and visibility. That’s where the industry is heading and it’s the future we are building for.
Aspire’s AI tools now handle tasks like real-time cash visibility, receipt matching and month-end closing — tasks that once needed a whole team. Which areas of a CFO’s daily operations can genuinely be fully automated today, and which will always need a human?
AI is undoubtedly changing the finance function by taking on more operations that traditionally consumed finance teams. But finance is also one of the most regulated and risk-sensitive functions in any business. Every financial decision carries implications for governance, compliance and accountability. As a result, finance teams have a much lower tolerance for error than many other business functions.
That’s why I see AI augmenting the CFO’s team. It can surface insights faster, execute routine workflows and reduce manual effort. But decisions around capital allocation, risk, strategy, regulatory compliance and ultimately signing off on the numbers will continue to require human judgement and oversight. The opportunity isn’t to remove people from finance. It’s to free them from repetitive work so they can spend more time on the decisions that create value.
When a business expands across ASEAN, it runs into diverse currencies, tax laws and banking regulations. Which financial process usually breaks first and how do new-generation B2B fintechs fix them?
In our experience, spend tracking and visibility usually break first as businesses navigate multiple bank accounts and corporate cards across geographies. As a result, finance teams no longer have a real-time view of where money is being spent, how much cash is available across the group, or how efficiently capital is being deployed.
Opening local accounts can also take months, slowing expansion. And when a business finally has this in place, bank accounts in each country require separate logins and manual downloads for reconciliation. Meanwhile, traditional accounting software is not optimised for multi-geo and entity consolidation, creating friction for finance teams.
Today, corporate banking alone doesn’t work anymore. Ambitious businesses expect software, automation and insight. Traditional banks can’t move fast enough to adapt and finance software companies can’t replace regulated financial infrastructure. The future lies in bringing corporate banking and agentic ERP into one platform.
