Corporate welfare in Italy is worth over €7 billion. Yet fewer than half of Italian employees actually benefit from it. The reason is not a lack of employer interest. It is that the existing systems are rigid, often paper-heavy, and built around closed networks of pre-approved providers. On average, between 20% and 40% of welfare budgets go unspent every year. Smartwage, an Italian corporate welfare platform, is building the infrastructure to fix that. The startup just closed a €2 million pre-seed round to do it.
The Funding Breakdown:
The round was led by Step Fund, the venture capital fund managed by Alternative Capital Partners SGR. The deal involves an initial investment of one million euros and an additional commitment of a further million euros, with funds released in tranches to support the FinTech’s cash flow and platform development plan.
Smartwage is also supported by Zest, a leading Italian pre-seed investor and open innovation partner of Step Fund, providing support in governance, financial planning, and investor network development. The milestone-based structure gives the team a clear runway tied directly to product delivery and growth.
How the Platform Works:
Smartwage transforms corporate welfare from a closed, static system of agreements into a flexible digital wallet that employees can spend immediately. The FinTech verifies and authorises welfare spending in real time, allowing employees to spend at any provider offering services permitted by law, and proactively suggests refunds via a link to the individual user’s bank account.
Employees can use their welfare credit through a dedicated app, either directly using a linked payment card or indirectly through reimbursements. The app also features an AI-powered welfare coach that assists users in optimally allocating their budget. On the employer side, companies manage budgets centrally with automated compliance checks, which cuts down the administrative load significantly.
The Market Opportunity:
The Italian corporate welfare market is valued at over €7 billion, yet less than half of employees benefit from structured programs. The broader European market for such services reaches €80 billion.
According to the ADP Research People at Work 2025 Report, cited by Michele Novelli, partner at Step Fund, 62% of Italian employees struggle to make ends meet, making unused welfare budgets a real and pressing problem. Companies that do run structured welfare programs see measurable results: productivity increases of up to 30% and average per-capita turnover growth of 2.1% for every new service introduced, according to the Annual Report of the Corporate Welfare Lab, produced by Luiss Business School in collaboration with Edenred Italia.
The Team Behind it:
Smartwage was founded by Marco Gambardella as CEO, with Felice Cupane as CTO and Francesco Varuzza as COO. The three share a common background at Plurima, a company founded and developed by Gambardella, culminating in its sale to Italiana Assicurazioni in 2023. That track record of building and successfully exiting a financial services company gives the founding team direct operational experience in a regulated industry.
Lorenzo Ait and Delia di Bona join as advisors, actively supporting commercial development, strategy, and funding.
Where the Capital Goes:
With the new funding, Smartwage will accelerate product development, strengthen its go-to-market strategy, and further enhance its AI capabilities through continuous optimisation and training.
CTO Felice Cupane has been direct about the technical ambition: the goal is to reduce regulatory complexity through automation, data analysis and continuous optimisation of AI models, with further investment going into architecture, security and AI system refinement.
A Practical Tool for HR Teams:
For HR and finance teams looking at employee benefits FinTech, the Smartwage model is worth understanding. Most corporate welfare platforms in Europe still rely on merchant network agreements, meaning employees can only spend credits at pre-approved vendors. This creates friction, reduces uptake, and leads directly to the unspent budget problem.
Smartwage approaches this differently by treating digital welfare spending as an open payment infrastructure problem, not a vendor management problem. The platform uses regulated payment tools, meaning employees can effectively spend anywhere legally permitted, and the AI layer handles compliance verification automatically. For companies managing benefits across distributed workforces, that combination of flexibility and auditability is practically useful.
Operators and developers building in the HRTech or FinTech space in Europe can find Smartwage’s funding and architecture worth tracking as a case study in embedding regulated payments into benefit management.
Smartwage’s corporate welfare platform is one of several European FinTech startups rethinking how employee benefits work in practice. Its pre-seed close signals early institutional confidence in both the team and the model.
