Today we launch Rise
After a year of building, Rise launches today at Nordic Fintech Summit 2026. AI does the bookkeeping, a licensed accounting team reviews the work in real time, and the SME no longer stitches three systems together. A dozen Finnish companies are already using it.
Lennu Keinänen
Today, at 09:00 EEST, we are launching Rise at Nordic Fintech Summit 2026 in Helsinki. We've spent over a year building this, and I want to tell you what Rise is — and what it is not.
SME accounting is broken because of two opposing incentives
A 5–50 person company buys at least three separate services to run its finances: an accounting tool, a bank, and an external accountant. Information doesn't flow between them, so the founder moves it manually. The cash picture is still two weeks late.
The fragmentation is structural, not technical. Software vendors want to automate — it lowers their costs. Accounting firms bill by the hour, so automation eats directly into their revenue. These two sides have pulled in opposite directions for 20 years. The SME pays for both, and gets half the value that combining AI and licensed accounting expertise could actually deliver.
Rise: AI first, mobile second, accountant third
Rise is built in three layers, and the order matters.
AI first, because most SME bookkeeping work is repetitive. Machines do that work more reliably than humans, and Rise is built on this assumption from the ground up.
Mobile second, because the entrepreneur isn't sitting at a desk. Finance happens where the entrepreneur is.
Accountant third, because a machine cannot have the last word on the year-end accounts. A KLT-licensed team reviews entries before they are finalized.
The entrepreneur gets finished accounting from Rise, not a tool to make it themselves. This model is now starting to be called Service as a Software: the software does the work, the customer gets the result.
Finland is Europe's frontrunner in fully digital accounting and AI
We're launching in Finland because it is the most mature market in Europe for AI-driven financial management. According to the Finnish Federation of Financial Management's spring 2025 survey, 86% of Finnish accounting professionals view AI adoption positively, and 84% expect significant time savings. In the Nordic comparison, Finland leads clearly: 61% of Finnish organizations have already deployed AI, against 52% in Norway and 45% in Sweden. According to Statistics Finland, 38% of Finnish companies were using AI technologies by autumn 2025, up 14 percentage points year-on-year.
Electronic accounting, e-invoicing and cloud-based finance tools have been part of Finnish SME life longer than anywhere else in the EU. This is a market waiting for the right tool, not one that needs convincing.
The vision is European. Over 24 million SMEs across the EU are dealing with the same fragmentation. We start in Finland because Finland is ready first.
A dozen Finnish SMEs are already using Rise
Rise has been in pilot through spring 2026, and about a dozen Finnish 5–50 person companies are using it today.
Book a demo with me
If you run a Finnish SME — founder, CFO, or operations lead at a 5–50 person company — and the above sounds like what you've been waiting for: book 20 minutes with me directly.
I'm personally taking every demo for the first six weeks, because I want to hear from the first wave of customers what's working and what isn't. We've spent a year building this. It takes you 20 minutes.
Lennu Keinänen is Co-founder and Group CEO of Rise Financial Group. He is the founder of Paytrail, a serial entrepreneur, and an angel investor in technology companies. Lives in Switzerland.
