Personio acquires Berlin fintech Circula, adding spend management to its HR platform
Personio acquires Berlin fintech Circula, adding spend management to its HR platform #
Munich-based HR software company Personio has agreed to acquire Circula, a Berlin-based spend management platform, in what the company calls its largest acquisition to date. The deal was announced on 6 October 2026.
With the purchase, Personio becomes the first European vendor to offer HR software, payroll, and spend management in a single platform. The company, founded in 2015, serves more than 16,000 businesses covering around 1.6 million employees. It said the acquisition addresses a capability clients had frequently requested, noting that expense and tax rules vary by country across Europe, a compliance challenge that has also affected its payroll product.
Circula was founded in Berlin in 2017 by Nikolai Skatchkov and his co-founders. It serves more than 3,000 European mid-market businesses and roughly 250,000 individual users across expense reimbursement, travel costs, accounts payable, corporate cards, and tax-optimised employee benefits. Clients include Aston Martin, DATEV, and Securitas. The two companies had worked together before the acquisition and already share more than 500 joint customers, including Everphone, About You, and Westwing.
Under the deal, Circula will rebrand as “Circula by Personio” and its team will join Personio. The company said it will keep the product available as a standalone service for customers who do not use its HR platform and will continue developing it separately. Both companies have built integrations with DATEV, Germany’s dominant accounting and tax software. Personio said those integrations will be maintained and eventually merged.
“The tax logic for spend management and payroll was always built by two different companies,” said Skatchkov. “The merger with Personio changes that.” Personio CEO Hanno Renner said the deal brings salaries, expenses, and benefits under one platform for the first time in the European market.
Financial terms were not disclosed. The acquisition follows Circula’s €15 million Series A in 2025. EU Startups tracked close to €500 million in European HR and workforce management funding rounds across 2026.
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