Visma, the Norwegian software group, has taken a majority stake in pathway solutions, a Hamburg startup that automates bookkeeping for e-commerce and software companies. Visma raised its holding from 33% to 78% and plans to acquire the remaining shares in 2027, when pathway will become a wholly owned subsidiary, the German startup news site Startbase reported on October 22, 2026, citing the company's announcement.
The purchase price, other financial details and the valuation were not disclosed.
pathway will stay operationally independent and keep its Hamburg location, and its founders, Marco Feelisch and Ludwig Eisenblätter, will continue to lead the company, according to Startbase. Dealroom also reported the deal, describing the plan to buy the rest of the company and integrate it fully in 2027.
What pathway built
pathway's cloud software connects the places where online businesses make money to the accounting systems their tax advisers use. It pulls in transactions from sales channels, payment providers and marketplaces, including Shopify, Stripe, Amazon and TikTok Shop, matches them with payments and invoices, and exports the results to accounting software such as DATEV, the system used by many German tax advisers.
The company said it added more than ten marketplaces in 2026, among them Otto, Kaufland, Zalando, About You and Shop Apotheke, Startbase reported. It serves more than 4,000 companies and more than 1,000 tax firms in Germany and Austria, and the number of tax firms using it has more than tripled since Visma first invested in 2024. pathway has 25 employees.
When Visma announced its first investment in September 2024, it described pathway as a leading provider of accounting automation for Shopify and Stripe in Germany, and said the company was remote-first. Co-founder Ludwig Eisenblätter said at the time: "We started off by developing an expert platform for tax consultants."
In that 2024 release, Visma explained the product in simple terms: the platform, aimed at e-commerce and SaaS businesses, automatically matches transactions and invoices with the payments that settle them, then exports the data to the customer's accounting system. The release said pathway's service was built for online sellers and the tax firms that keep their books, and that the company was run by its two founders as co-CEOs.
Why Visma is buying
Visma is a cloud software group that, by its own figures, has about 2.7 million customers in Europe and Latin America. pathway was its third investment in Germany, after H&H and BuchhaltungsButler in 2023, according to Visma's 2024 announcement.
Tax advisers matter to that strategy. In the 2024 announcement, Visma's chief commercial officer, Steffen Torp, said that "tax advisers are important partners for Visma's software in the countries where we operate." He also said pathway "creates value for entrepreneurs by automating their mission-critical processes."
The latest announcement pointed to a shortage of staff at accounting firms. Citing figures from the ifo Institute, it said 64.7% of companies in legal services, tax consulting and auditing report difficulty finding skilled workers. pathway's software is meant to take manual matching and data entry off those firms' desks.
The founders and the path to full ownership
Feelisch and Eisenblätter founded pathway in Hamburg in 2018 and ran it as co-CEOs. Visma bought its first 33% in 2024; the amount it paid then was not disclosed, and pathway has not reported any other outside funding.
The deal is being done in three steps: a minority stake in 2024, a majority now and the remaining shares in 2027. Until then the founders keep running the company from Hamburg. Startbase paraphrased statements from Feelisch and Torp in the announcement but did not quote them directly.
In 2024, Feelisch said Visma was "the ideal partner for pathway solutions to automate revenue accounting even further." Neither side has said how pathway's product will be combined with Visma's other German accounting software after 2027.
