Round vs Payhawk in 2026: Which Fits Multi-Entity AP and Spend Management?

Round and Payhawk both claim to simplify finance across multiple entities, but they count entities differently and hold your money through different regulatory routes. Payhawk opens a separate account per legal entity and prices growth beyond that as add-ons.

Round puts every entity on one dashboard from the start and names a hard cap: three entities on Growth, unlimited on Enterprise.

Your choice depends on which mechanic actually matches how your group is structured today.

TL;DR

• Round Financial Limited is directly authorised and regulated by the FCA under FRN 1050315, first authorised on 2 July 2026. Our everyday e-money balance is issued by Keel Money Ltd (FRN 1020783), with us acting as a Regulation 33 distributor rather than the issuer.
• Payhawk Financial Services Limited is a UK electronic money institution under FCA FRN 987096, authorised 12 January 2024; its EEA business runs through a separate entity, Payhawk Financial Services UAB, licensed by the Bank of Lithuania on 11 July 2023.
• Our Growth tier caps multi-entity support at 3 entities on one dashboard, and Enterprise removes the cap, as our pricing page sets out on 1 September 2026.
• Payhawk opens one account per legal entity and prices additional entities and multi-entity management as separate add-ons on top of module-based pricing (payhawk.com/pricing-and-plans, checked 1 September 2026).
• We can route idle cash into the BlackRock ICS Sterling Liquidity Fund, up to 3.79% AER as of 13 November 2025. Your capital is at risk. Payhawk's published product scope carries no treasury or yield line as of 1 September 2026.

Want to see how your own entity structure maps onto a three-entity cap, or an unlimited one? Book a Round demo and bring your actual entity count.

How do Round and Payhawk start from different problems?

Payhawk is a spend management platform. It issues cards, tracks expenses, books travel and routes procurement, treating accounts payable as one module inside that stack.

We are a treasury platform. We hold the cash balance itself, then fund accounts payable and payroll from that balance the moment a bill or payroll run clears approval.

The difference shows first in how each of us treats a legal entity. Payhawk's own multi-entity page states that "opening a Payhawk account for each of your legal entities eliminates intercompany transactions and loans across subsidiaries," then layers a Group Dashboard on top.

We instead put one dashboard in front of every connected bank account across a group from the start, filterable by entity.

Neither approach is wrong. A group that wants each subsidiary to look like its own clean set of books gets that from Payhawk. A group that wants one cash position it can act on immediately gets that from us.

Round vs Payhawk on multi-entity AP and spend management

The table states what each vendor publishes today, checked 1 September 2026, not a paraphrase of either company's marketing.

How does each platform handle a third entity?

Multi-entity claims are easy to make and hard to verify until you ask what happens at the third or fourth entity specifically.

On Payhawk, each legal entity gets its own account, which the company says removes intercompany loans and transactions between subsidiaries since nothing shares a ledger. Multi-entity management itself ships only inside Payhawk's Enterprise plan, stays unavailable on Growth regardless of entity count, and "additional entities" prices as its own add-on line.

With us, entities share one dashboard from the start rather than starting from separate accounts. Growth supports up to three entities on that dashboard. A fourth requires Enterprise, which removes the cap entirely and adds cross-entity reporting.

Neither model publishes what a specific fourth or fifth entity costs. We name the entity count that triggers a tier change. Payhawk prices the entity itself as a variable, separating entities at account level rather than sharing one cash view.

What happens to idle cash across those entities?

Our cash sits behind three separate regulatory relationships, not one. The everyday e-money balance issues from Keel Money Ltd, an EMI authorised under the Electronic Money Regulations 2011 (FRN 1020783).

We are appointed under Regulation 33 to distribute and redeem that e-money on Keel's behalf and, in our own words, are "not itself authorised to issue electronic money or provide payment services." That balance is not a deposit and is not FSCS protected.

Cash moved into our Money Market Account route sits instead in the BlackRock ICS Sterling Liquidity Fund, an AAA-rated institutional fund in segregated accounts. Our tiered rates, quoted as of 13 November 2025, ran Launch 3.29% AER, Growth 3.59% AER and Enterprise up to 3.79% AER, net of fees.

These are not today's live rates; your capital is at risk and this is not a bank deposit.

A separate Insignis route spreads cash across 100+ accounts at 25 banks through an introducer arrangement, building FSCS protection up to £3.5m in aggregate at the standard £120,000-per-banking-group limit.

Payhawk publishes none of this, because it has no equivalent product. Cash sits in dedicated Payhawk accounts in EUR, GBP, USD, CHF, DKK and PLN, safeguarded through JP Morgan and Paynetics AD, with no published interest or yield line anywhere in its pricing, product or accounts payable pages.

Our balance keeps earning until the moment a bill pays out. The same balance on Payhawk earns nothing on the platform itself.

How multi-entity payroll works on each platform

We let a finance team drop a payroll file that gets mapped, prepped, routed for approval and paid on schedule, with multi-currency support across GBP, USD and EUR and multi-entity approval workflows built in from Growth up.

Payhawk's current product architecture, checked across its product, pricing and accounts payable pages on 1 September 2026, contains no payroll-execution module. Its HR integrations, including Workday, SAP, ADP, Ceridian, Paychex and Paylocity, sync employee data and reimbursements to a payroll system Payhawk does not itself run.

That is a real capability boundary, not a research gap. A business that already runs payroll through a dedicated provider and only wants expenses reconciled gets that from Payhawk's HR sync.

A business that wants payroll executed and funded from the same balance as its bills does not get that from Payhawk today, at any tier.

What cross-border FX costs across entities

Payhawk settles cross-border payments in 115+ currencies across 150+ countries through JP Morgan-powered rails, and its accounts payable page states cross-border FX "from 0.3%" (checked 1 September 2026).

Converting between Payhawk's own currency accounts costs mid-market plus 0.3% on EUR, GBP, USD and CHF, or plus 0.7% on DKK and PLN.

We price FX in three tiers by plan: Launch at 0.50%, Growth at 0.30% and Enterprise "as low as 0.10%", on a narrower set of GBP, USD and EUR.

We also quote a flat 15 basis point headline rate elsewhere, so confirm the rate that applies to your plan before you model a single figure.

The published floors land close together, both 0.30%, but cover different ground. Our tiers apply to a defined three-currency set most UK, EU and US entities actually hold.

Payhawk's floor covers a wider footprint, but "from 0.3%" is a starting point, not a guaranteed rate.

For a group paying suppliers where its own entities sit, our narrower, disclosed tiers can be modelled today without a call. For a group paying across dozens of currencies outside that set, Payhawk's broader network is the more direct fit.

Who is authorised to hold this money?

Round Financial Limited is authorised and regulated by the FCA under FRN 1050315, with a first authorisation date of 2 July 2026 on the FCA's own register, data as at close of business 31 August 2026.

We do not appear on the FCA's e-money institution or payment institution lists, which is why the everyday balance is issued by Keel Money Ltd rather than by us.

We are registered at Companies House under number 14609702, incorporated 23 January 2023.

We are not the issuer of our own everyday e-money balance. That balance issues from Keel Money Ltd (FRN 1020783) under a Regulation 33 arrangement. We are also an agent of Plaid Financial Limited (FRN 804718) for account information services, and an introducer to Insignis Asset Management Limited (FRN 813442) for our FSCS-eligible Savings route.

Payhawk Financial Services Limited is authorised by the FCA as an electronic money institution under FRN 987096, effective 12 January 2024, confirmed on the FCA's own e-money firms register, and registered at Companies House under number 14060082, incorporated 21 April 2022.

Its EEA business runs through a separate entity, Payhawk Financial Services UAB, licensed by the Bank of Lithuania, licence number 95, issued 11 July 2023.

In the US, Payhawk's cards issue through Cross River Bank, a member of the FDIC.

Neither company is a bank. Neither everyday e-money balance is FSCS protected. Only our separate Insignis Savings route carries FSCS protection, up to £3.5m in aggregate across 25 partner banks.

For a multi-entity group, the practical question is which regulatory relationship sits behind the specific balance a given entity's cash is held in, because we alone run three separate ones depending on which product you use.

Pricing once more than one entity is in scope

Payhawk's pricing, rebuilt into a three-layer architecture as of its current page (checked 1 September 2026), starts with a Foundation of Core Modules, adds a usage-based Scalability Layer, then a Customization Layer of add-ons including Advanced ERP integrations, additional entities and multi-entity management.

Payhawk states there is no setup fee and contracts typically run annual or multi-year.

Payhawk's only fixed, published price is the Growth program: £149 a month for 24 months, for a single UK or EEA entity under 20 employees, with 10 cards, 10 seats and up to 15 invoices and 15 reimbursements a month.

Its own page states Growth "is limited to 1 entity and does not include... multi-entity management."

We publish three named tiers rather than modules. Launch is free, with 25 invoices and 10 payroll payments a month and no stated entity limit. Growth caps at up to 3 entities and 10 users.

Enterprise removes the cap. Both require a conversation with us.

What a finance team can compare today, before either of us is on a call, is the shape of the pricing model. Payhawk prices by module and add-on, so entity growth is a variable cost on a quote.

We price by named tier, so entity growth is a step change from one published cap to unlimited.

What the multi-entity decision is worth

Take a UK parent company with two EU subsidiaries: three entities, 85 employees across the group, an illustrative group rather than a real business. Assume it processes 220 supplier invoices a month worth £340,000 in AP volume, moves £120,000 a month in cross-border FX to pay EU suppliers, and holds an average £900,000 in combined idle cash across the three entities while it waits to fund bills and payroll.

On our Growth tier, which fits this group's entity count, FX at 0.30% on £120,000 costs £360 a month, £4,320 a year. The plan includes 100 invoices a month; the remaining 120 cost £0.80 each in overage, £96 a month, £1,152 a year: £5,472 a year in disclosed, calculable platform costs.

If the same £900,000 sits in our Money Market Account route at the Growth-tier rate quoted as of 13 November 2025, 3.59% AER, it works out to roughly £32,310 a year, net of fees.

This is a dated rate, not today's live yield, and a capital-at-risk investment product, not a bank deposit.

Ask us for the current rate before treating this figure as more than an illustration.

On Payhawk, the same £120,000 FX volume costs at least £360 a month at its published "from 0.3%" floor. Invoice processing bundles into module and seat pricing rather than charging per invoice, so no equivalent £1,152 figure exists, only a quote.

There is no yield line at all: the same £900,000 earns nothing on the platform.

The FX numbers land close together at the published floor. The gap that actually moves the decision is the roughly £32,310 a year our dated MMF route could be worth on this group's idle cash, an amount a Payhawk-only stack has no built-in way to produce, set against the cost of taking on a capital-at-risk product to get it.

Which fits a multi-entity UK, EU or US operation in 2026?

Payhawk fits a group whose main constraint is spend control and procurement across many entities, not idle cash. Its Enterprise plan, its module stack of Travel, Procurement, Cards & Expenses and AP, and its 6,000+ company base point at organisations already running, or about to run, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics 365 or SAP S/4HANA.

A group running ten or more entities with a genuine travel and procurement problem, purchase orders needing two- and three-way matching, and cash management already sorted elsewhere is not well served by us today.

We have no procurement or travel module at all, and our entity cap tops out at unlimited only on Enterprise, with no procurement workflow to grow into once you get there.

That is a stated boundary of what we have built, and we would rather you knew it now.

We fit a leaner group whose main constraint is fragmented cash: several entities, several banks, and a balance that should keep earning while it funds bills and payroll.

Our three-entity Growth cap suits a group in that range, with a clear step to Enterprise if it grows past it.

The reverse case is just as real. A single-entity UK small business under 20 employees, with no near-term plan to add a second entity and no appetite for a capital-at-risk yield product, gets little from us that Payhawk's own £149-a-month Growth program does not already cover.

Naming which constraint is active, spend control or fragmented cash, narrows the choice faster than comparing feature lists.

What should you test before switching?

Every figure above carries a date because every one of these numbers moves. Verify each one directly with the vendor before it drives a decision.

• Open a Payhawk account for a second entity, or add a fourth entity to a Round Enterprise trial, and see what genuinely duplicates versus what consolidates
• Ask each vendor for the current AER, or FX rate, and the exact date it was quoted, before treating any number from this article as live
• Ask Payhawk directly whether multi-entity management is included in your quote or priced as the separate add-on its own pricing page describes
• Confirm which entity in your group the FCA authorisation, EMI licence, or introducer arrangement actually covers, not just the parent brand name

Where we would put ourselves, in one line. Choose us when fragmented cash across entities is the active constraint and the balance should keep earning while it funds bills and payroll, at three entities or fewer on Growth.

Choose Payhawk when spend control, travel and procurement across many entities is the constraint, when purchase orders need two and three-way matching, or when a capital-at-risk yield product is not something your board wants at all.

Neither of us covers the other's ground today. Naming the constraint that is actually active is faster than comparing module lists, and it is the only comparison that survives contact with a quote.