"Continia Isn't Good Anymore" – Is That True? A Technical Comparison with 365 business Banking

In a recent customer conversation, one sentence made us sit up: “Continia isn’t good anymore.” The recommendation instead: a younger alternative called 365 business Banking by 365 business development.

We take statements like that seriously – but we don’t accept them unexamined. As a Continia partner we have a vested interest, and we’re upfront about it. Which is exactly why we examined both products the way we would for a customer project: with a technical review instead of marketing slides.

What we examined

We compared both products based on the vendors’ complete documentation, the public price lists and our project experience as a Business Central partner – Continia Banking in its current version (2026 R1) and 365 business Banking (18.2).

One important methodological note up front: the documentation depth of the two vendors differs considerably. Continia documents its solution in great detail and even ships the source code to partners – making the solution auditable. For 365 business Banking, the documentation is leaner and the app is only available as an encrypted package. So wherever we say “not documented” below, it means: not found in the docs – not necessarily “doesn’t exist”.

What the criticism gets right

The facts don’t support the blanket dismissal – but there is a legitimate core to it. Four things the partner might have meant:

1. Product transition: The classic Continia Payment Management has been discontinued (sales stopped October 2025, support phasing out towards April 2027). Existing customers must migrate to the successor product, Continia Banking. If you equate “Continia” with the legacy product, the criticism is fair – but the actively developed successor is not affected by it.
2. No native EBICS/FinTS client in BC: for fully automated direct connectivity to German banks, Continia relies on an aggregator – primarily konfipay (EBICS), alternatively BANKSapi – i.e. a second contract party plus module fees. But it is not mandatory: every listed bank also supports manual communication via standard files. Continia generates the pain.001/pain.008, the transport is handled by your existing banking software (SFIRM, ProfiCash or similar) or the bank portal, and camt.053 statements are imported back – no aggregator, no second contract. So the criticism only holds for the convenience case of full automation.
3. Everything runs through Continia’s cloud: even the generation and parsing of bank files (pain, camt) happens server-side via Continia Online – a purely offline operation isn’t supported, even on-premises. (That banking on BC SaaS needs a cloud component at all is normal, though – more on that below.)
4. Pricing: Perpetual licences were discontinued at the turn of the year, and partners report price adjustments in 2026. Anyone using direct connectivity has a second cost block in konfipay – with manual file connectivity, that drops away. The list prices themselves are public: Continia publishes transaction-based price sheets (Business Central Online, as of January 2026: Essential module from €12/month for up to 25 transactions).

These are real friction points. But they don’t turn a technically mature product into a bad one.

What Continia Banking actually delivers

Continia Banking is a product of enterprise proportions, with a level of maturity rarely seen in the BC ecosystem:

• Bank statement reconciliation: multi-stage, deterministic matching logic (document numbers, end-to-end IDs, structured payment references, detection via IBAN/name), complemented by configurable rule types including direct G/L posting and a Copilot feature for AI-generated matching rules.
• Outgoing payments: payment proposals with cash discount tolerances, batching and templates, bank status feedback (pain.002) down to transaction level, export rollback and job queue automation. Instant payments are supported – availability depends on the respective bank channel.
• Approval & security: full integration with the BC workflow engine including amount limits and four-eyes principle, plus recipient bank account verification with change monitoring – payments to unverified accounts are blocked.
• DACH specifics: SEPA mandate management with automatic sequence handling, payment advices by e-mail, and German AWV/Z4 regulatory reporting to the Bundesbank.
• Flexible bank connectivity: over 100 German banks are listed – either as automated direct connectivity via aggregator or as manual file exchange (pain/camt) through existing banking software. That positions Continia far more broadly than a pure API connection and lets existing processes (e.g. SFIRM) keep running.
• Extensibility: numerous documented integration events, and the source code is made available to partners – a real difference for partner development and debugging.

There are weaknesses too: no VEU (the distributed electronic signature happens outside BC, at the aggregator or in the bank portal) and no pre-notification for direct debits. Nobody is perfect here.

The challenger: 365 business Banking

365 business Banking deliberately takes a different path – and gets several things right:

• A single lean app instead of a suite, supporting versions all the way down to BC 18 (2021 Wave 1). Continia does ship dedicated builds per BC major version, but Continia Banking currently supports BC 26 and up – for older existing installations, 365bd reaches back much further.
• Bank connectivity entirely via finAPI (BaFin-licensed, around 4,500 banks): PSD2/XS2A plus FinTS – and the aggregator is included in the price. No second contract, no separate onboarding.
• Transparent, usage-based pricing from €7.90 per user per month, publicly listed. Account retrieval and incoming payments are free of charge.
• Integrated Verification of Payee (VoP) – given the EU’s VoP mandate, a timely, genuine plus: we could find no comparable VoP integration at Continia, neither in the documentation nor on the official roadmap; they rely on their own recipient bank account verification instead. Instant payments, on the other hand, both products handle.
• Automatic bank reconciliation with a rule set: builds on BC’s standard payment reconciliation journal and extends it – IBAN-based sender identification, document number matching (including partial matches for batch payments), weighted context words, and configurable reconciliation rules with text patterns, ZKA/SEPA purpose codes and G/L account assignment including dimensions; plus job queue automation and partial posting of the journal.

Against that stand significant limitations:

• A very young product: AppSource launch in September 2025 – a track record is naturally missing.
• No EBICS: which conceptually rules out EBICS-typical corporate features such as VEU. For serious corporate payment operations in Germany, however, EBICS is the established standard. As a fallback for difficult banks the vendor documents web scraping – for us a warning sign regarding robustness.
• Feature availability depends on the bank: whatever your bank’s PSD2 interface doesn’t expose (batch payments, for instance), the app can’t offer either. This has to be checked per bank in advance.
• Some things are not documented: payment advices, non-SEPA international payments, regulatory reporting, payment approval workflows with amount limits, developer events – none of it could be found in the docs.

The head-to-head comparison

Criterion	Continia Banking	365 business Banking
Product maturity	High, successor to a long-standing product	Very young (launched 09/2025)
DACH bank connectivity	Direct via aggregator (konfipay/BANKSapi) or manually by file via own banking software (SFIRM etc.)	finAPI (PSD2, FinTS), included
EBICS	Indirect (via aggregator or own EBICS software)	No
VEU (distributed signature)	No (outside BC)	No (by design)
Instant payments / VoP	Yes (depending on bank channel) / No, own account verification	Yes / Yes, integrated
Matching & rules	Multi-stage matching, configurable rules, Copilot	IBAN/document no. matching, context words, reconciliation rules
Approval workflows	BC workflows, limits, account verification	Not comparably documented
International payments / regulatory reporting	Yes, incl. German Z4 reporting	Not documented
Cloud dependency	Hard (Continia Online)	Hard (365 API + finAPI)
Transparency for partners	Source code available to partners	Encrypted package
Pricing	Public price sheets, transaction-based from €12/month (+ konfipay only for direct connectivity)	Public, from €7.90/user/month

Why both “live in the cloud” – and why that isn’t a criticism

One point deserves a deeper look, because it gets used as a killer argument against one product or the other: cloud dependency. In reality, for Business Central banking it is not a design weakness but a platform necessity.

The reason lies in AL, Business Central’s programming language. The actual bank protocol – the EBICS cryptography with key management, encryption and above all the canonicalised XML signature (C14N) – can’t be implemented sensibly in AL when running in the cloud. The only workaround that could do it technically (.NET interop) works exclusively on-premises, never in the SaaS cloud.

The consequence: any serious banking solution on BC SaaS has to run the protocol outside AL and call it from within Business Central. That’s exactly what both do – just differently:

• Continia generates and parses the bank files server-side in its own cloud (Continia Online) and calls them from BC.
• 365 business Banking puts finAPI, an external provider, in front to handle the protocol.

So “it runs in the cloud” doesn’t work as an argument against either product – it necessarily applies to both, and to any comparable solution. The right question isn’t whether cloud, but: whose cloud, what data flows there, and what does it cost? And there the details matter – for instance, that with Continia even manual mode routes file generation through their cloud, while the pure file transport stays in your hands.

Our assessment: there is no winner, there are scenarios

365 business Banking fits when payment operations are purely SEPA-oriented, your banks offer solid PSD2 or FinTS interfaces, predictable costs and simple setup matter – and the organisation can live with a young product. For many smaller companies that is a perfectly valid profile.

Continia Banking fits when payment operations are complex: deep rule-based matching, approval workflows with limits, payment advices, mandate automation, international payments including regulatory reporting – or when EBICS corporate banking connectivity is required. On the connection you have a choice: manual file exchange through your existing banking software (no extra contract) or the more convenient, paid direct connectivity via aggregator.

And if you’re still on an older NAV version: neither product is an option there – the path leads through a BC upgrade first.

Before you decide

Five questions carry the decision – in this order:

1. What does your payment operation actually need? Is SEPA enough (plus maybe GBP/CZK/RON), or do you need EBICS corporate connectivity, VEU approvals, non-SEPA international payments and AWV/Z4 regulatory reporting? This single answer often rules one of the two out already.
2. How should your banks be connected? Check per bank: for Continia, does the free file exchange through your existing software (SFIRM etc.) suffice, or do you want the convenient direct connectivity – and what does the konfipay contract then cost? And does 365bd’s PSD2 interface deliver every function your bank needs (batch payments, standing orders)?
3. What does it cost over three years? It’s not the entry price that decides, but the cost curve at your real transaction volume – including aggregator fees and add-on packages.
4. Which BC version are you targeting? Continia Banking currently requires BC 26+, 365bd reaches back to BC 18. On an older NAV/BC version, the version is the prior decision – not the product.
5. Why is the partner advising against it? Do they mean the discontinued Payment Management? The pricing? A specific project experience? Or are they a reseller of the alternative themselves? The answer separates substance from self-interest.

Blanket verdicts – in either direction – are no substitute for analysis. If you’re facing exactly this decision, talk to us: we’ll put the facts on the table, our partner role included.