EU Sovereignty Score
EU sovereignFintech & NeobanksHeadquarters: FR

Swan: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Swan is a Paris-based embedded finance provider. Its banking-as-a-service platform lets other companies offer accounts, payment cards, SEPA payments and related financial services inside their own products, through an API. Swan is a licensed electronic money institution supervised by the French prudential authority ACPR. Its customers are the businesses that build these products, not end consumers.

Swan was founded in Paris in 2019. In January 2025 it announced a further EUR 42 million as an extension of its Series B round, led by Eight Roads Ventures, with existing investors Lakestar, Accel, Creandum, Hexa and BPI France participating again. The sources reviewed name no controlling shareholder. The Swan website does not state where customer data is hosted. For a European organisation, Swan is a French, EU-licensed provider, but where processing takes place depends on the contract with the business that embeds the service.

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Sovereignty score
71 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-2100
    Headquartered in the EU: European law applies
  • Data residency SOV-3100
    EU-only hosting
  • Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-360
    Key management with a European vendor
  • Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
    Closed source: switching requires data migration
  • Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-655
    Closed source, runtime with the vendor

SOV codes: the matching objective in the European Commission's Cloud Sovereignty Framework. Official source

How the score is calculated

Facts and evidence

Last checked October 10, 2026
Headquarters
FR (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty model
Vendor-hosted (EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting
EUVerified by hand
Open-source
NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
NoVendor-stated
Category
Fintech & Neobanks
Type
Product
Website
swan.io ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Swan

The European alternatives to Swan come from our knowledge base of over 6,800 vendors. We only list vendors headquartered in the EU or the EEA; fully European-owned vendors rank before vendors with a foreign owner. For each alternative you see the country, the open-source status and a short description.

Score per alternative: 0 = high exposure, 100 = sovereign

116 European Fintech & Neobanks vendors are in the catalogue. View the whole category · Submit an alternative · View category on the map

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Why digital sovereignty matters with Swan

Swan is headquartered in FR and therefore falls under European law: the GDPR, NIS2 and the Data Act. No foreign legislation can compel access to your data.

Data is hosted exclusively in the EU, so Swan scores best on data residency.

Swan is closed source and hosted by the vendor. The encryption keys and the runtime sit with the vendor and switching requires data migration. Ask about bring-your-own-key, export options and open standards.

What this means for your organisation depends on your whole stack and context. The free assessment weighs Swan together with your other vendors and gives a total score, a heatmap and the main risk drivers.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best European alternative to Swan?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Swan include 1822direkt, ActivoBank and Air Bank. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Swan?

Our list of EU alternatives to Swan is mostly commercial options. Browse the category on the map for open-source choices.

Is Swan GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

Swan is headquartered in FR (EU) and hosts data in EU. That makes Swan an EU-sovereign choice in its own right; the EU alternatives on this page are comparable European tools.

Details and sources

Verified by handHeadquarters, owner, hosting locations and licence have been checked by us against public sources. Free of charge and for every vendor, not a paid label. Nothing in this knowledge base is taken over automatically. Last checked on October 10, 2026.

Sources

Public sources used in the latest check of this record.

Compliance evidence

The links below point to the vendor's own public documents. We only record what we found: a missing link means "not found publicly", not "not compliant".

No public compliance evidence has been recorded for this vendor yet. Do you know its DPA or subprocessor list? Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Digital sovereignty in Fintech & Neobanks

Fintech & Neobanks: Digital banks, neobanks, money transfers and fintech services. In this category the choice of vendor determines who has legal access to your data, where that data lives and how easily you can switch later.

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8 European alternatives to Swan — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score