Formance

Continuing our series of articles on how to make fintech data models better, the part 2 is out and goes over the concept of "Funds Traceability" 🔎 Fintechs and platforms holding money on behalf of their users are not permitted to fabricate money themselves, but rather act as a temporary orchestrator of these funds. This causes unique challenges in traceability and the lineage of funds, i.e., being capable of mapping a unique user liability down to the very precise asset backing it. Digital ledgering systems were originally shaped by classical accounting principles (optimized for financial reporting) and, as a result, were never designed to address such complex technical questions. Yet, these data models found their way into many core ledger products—leading to reconciliation headaches at best and, as recent events showcase, chaos and loss of user funds at worst. 📚 Read the full article here:

Starting a series of articles sharing our thoughts on how to make fintech data models better 📚 The first one, Warehousing Promises, is out! And goes over why we think data models optimized for classical accounting fall short for core ledgering systems, how they can even facilitate “Synapse Still Can’t Find Its Money”-sort of situations (citing Matt Levine’s last column, you should also check it out), and how promise-based semantics is the way forward to make the identity of funds-held-on-behalf of users a first-class concern. 🔎 Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/eAJdjJGp

"But debits reduce the account balance, right?" That's the type of assumption we can quickly end up hearing and subsequently being debated when discussing complex flow of funds scenarios. And for a good reason: debits and credits are somewhat counterintuitive, and more importantly their meaning is not context-free. 🔶 Debits and Credits Aren’t Universal Increases or Decreases Debits can increase or decrease balances—accounts context in the chart of account and their normality is everything. 🔶 It’s All About Perspective Ledgers are created from the point of view of their owner, and should be pivoted to your own point of view when brought to your system. 🔶 Every Transaction Has Two Sides Debits and credits can balance each other in ways that will either elevate, reduce or transform your ledger financial position. Continuing our series of primers on Ledgering Systems, we focus this time on accounting semantics. Read the full article in comments!

We talk about ledgers all the time, but what is a ledger, actually? In our latest piece, we explore this question, breaking down the different types of ledgers to equip you with a clear understanding of which ledger best suits your needs. 🔶 General Ledger: Tracks financial activity for company-wide reporting, essential for compliance and financial statements. 🔶 Core Ledger: Designed for tracking virtual transactions within platforms or financial products. Maintains a real-time record of user-to-user transactions and abstract states without moving actual money. 🔶 Cash Ledger: Captures real cash flows similar to a bank statement but without assigning transaction meanings, eventually reconciled with core and general ledgers. 🔶 Sub-ledgers: Tracks specific subsets of business activity, such as individual customer-related events, ultimately feeding summarized data into other ledgers. As with any aspect of financial infrastructure, this disambiguation comes with nuances and details beyond this summary. Be sure to check out our full article to learn more (link in comments).

Fantastic panel session chatting about High Performance Ledgering at Portage Growth Summit earlier this month in NYC. With a stellar moderation by Kris Hansen, who has been building ledgers for years, most recently at Synctera. I had the chance to dive into this topic in depth, and share our insights alongside the ones of Paul Nordstrom from Temporal Technologies. My key takeaways: 🔷 The word "Ledger" doesn't mean much in itself. It is a word that has been carried through centuries, and with this journey comes a high ambiguity buildup. There are dozens of subtle nuances between general ledgers, sub-ledgers, core ledgers—all the more so when considering different financial activities. Before deciding that you need to build or buy a ledger, I would advise taking some time describing what kind, and what systems it will serve. 🔷 Layering is key. When building ledgers, you will not want to optimize for everything at once. Complex, opinionated accounting concerns should be taken out of the critical real-time transaction path. So should rails-specific payments data. Eventual consistency should be used as a powerful tool whenever it is possible. 🔷 Open Source is the way forward. Core transactional systems need high availability and a high level of customization. At both Formance and Temporal, we navigate the endless build-vs-buy engineering dilemma by reducing risk, enabling extensibility and ownability with our in-the-open products from day one. The ledgering world data is still pretty much in its black-and-white film era. We're actively bringing it to its high-resolution, color native era at Formance.

“Were you really lucky — or did you create your own luck?” That’s the playful challenge I throw at every female founder when they say, “Oh, I just got lucky,” after recounting all their achievements. Of course, it’s a rhetorical question. There’s solid research showing women are more prone to feelings of inadequacy than men (happy to share sources!). But that’s not the point here. I’ve decided it’s easier for me to amplify these incredible voices than for them to “self-promote.” So here’s my first shoutout, and it’s dedicated to someone remarkable: Anne-Sybille Pradelles. ✨ A Bold Start • Straight out of HEC Paris (aka the “Harvard Business School” of France), she took a daring leap into a pre-seed startup called Alsid in 2017. It wasn’t today’s thriving Parisian tech scene—she could have joined any prestigious firm, but she chose to build from scratch with a team of 4. ⚙️ From 4 to 120+ • Over the next few years, she grew Alsid into a 120+ person powerhouse, leading operations across EMEA, US, and APAC, picking up promotions along the way. 🏆 Big Win • Alsid’s execution was sharp, fast, and under the radar—so much so that Tenable acquired them for $98M in 2021. And yes, she could’ve stayed there comfortably. But she didn’t. 🚀 Taking Another Bet • Anne-Sybille co-founded Formance, a startup accepted into Y Combinator (a program with a mere 2% acceptance rate). Formance builds the financial infrastructure for SaaS platforms. They already count heavyweights like Doctolib (the “ZocDoc of Europe” used by 72M people) and Booksy (23M users) among their customers. 🛡️ Long-Term Strategy • Instead of chasing hype, Formance is committed to building a true moat with transparency and open-source principles at its core. Anne-Sybille and her co-founder, Clément Salaün, are redefining how financial backends should work. If you’re curious about the complexities of money flows, or just want to follow a category-defining company in action, keep an eye on Anne-Sybille! 🙌 Because no, it wasn’t luck. It was vision, guts, and relentless execution. 🫶

We’re thrilled to welcome Sofia Simdianova as our new DevOps Engineer Intern! She'll be working closely with Maxence Maireaux's team on DevOps initiatives, focusing on: > Enhancing the Formance Cloud infrastructure > Streamlining CI/CD processes > Improving internal developer workflows and environments 3 cool things about Sofia: ☢️ She has an impressive background as a scientist, specializing in isotope separation technology and nuclear fuel ⌨️ She decided to shift her focus to IT and platform engineering, drawn by the exciting and complex challenges of the field 📺 When she’s not diving deep into tech, she enjoys indulging in celebrity gossip and binge-watching medical series Welcome to the Formance team Sofia!

Off-sites are always a great opportunity to ensure that everyone in the company is aligned with the mission we've set for Formance, and that every decision and action is taken with that purpose in mind 🎯 💵 At Formance, we're on a mission to redefine how developers interact with money as a first-class primitive, and embed complex money flows in their applications. Hidden through permissioned, vendor-locked infrastructure, money needs to rewire itself to empower product-first companies with the ability to compose innovative financial applications. 🔨 With the Formance Platform, we're putting agnostic primitives in the hands of engineers and their team. These primitives are available as open-source packages, and can be wired to the financial partner of your choice. 🌐 Formance is global native and serving enterprise companies around the globe, around the clock, to build and scale their financial applications. #devtool #fintech #infra #opensource

New setting this time for our quarterly off-site just a few minutes from Paris 🏰🌿 Thanks again Naboo for helping us organize this event 🙏 PS: we're currently looking for new team members at Formance >> feel free to check out the open positions on our website!