Fintech is a rapidly emerging area of business in Estonia with now 78 companies, among which 18 in the blockchain, crypto space, according to the first ever draft of the Estonia Fintech Startup Map.
Estonia has a burgeoning blockchain industry and its history dates back to 2008 when the country began utilizing the technology. Since then, the sector has rapidly grown and given birth to the likes of Guardtime, the world’s largest blockchain company, and Funderbeam, a global investing and trading platform utilizing blockchain.
Today, Guardtime’s KSI Blockchain is utilized by clients including Verizon, the US and Thai governments, Lockheed Martin and Ericsson, while Funderbeam, founded in 2013 by Kaidi Ruusalepp, a former CEO of the Nasdaq Tallinn stock exchange, has attracted global investments. Last year, Funderbeam inked a partnership with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) to provide equity financing to startups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Southeast Europe, and received new financial licenses from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to expand its marketplace in Asia.
Other notable Estonian blockchain and crypto startups include Polybius, which is building a fully digital bank for businesses and individuals, Paxful, a peer-to-peer (P2P) Bitcoin marketplace, Blockhive, which helps traditional companies around the globe integrate blockchain into their business, and Bit of Property, a blockchain based real estate crowdinvestment platform.
Another developed fintech segment in Estonia is P2P lending and alternative financing with startups and platforms such as AskRobin, a credit marketplace matching consumers with best available credit offers in the market, Bondora, a leading platform for investing in European personal loans, and Investly, a platform for invoice financing operating in the UK and Estonia.
In payments, Estonia has produced globally successful companies including unicorn TransferWise, award winning Monese, and digital carrier billing service provider company Fortumo. All of them have significant research and development (R&D), engineering and 24/7, multilingual client service operations in Estonia.
Other success stories in the Estonian fintech sector include Fitek, an e-invoicing platform, Pocopay, which offers convenient mobile banking, allowing consumers to split bills, request money using email addresses or QR codes and make payments via a MasterCard contactless debit card, and Icefire, which designs and builds transformative technologies for banks and fintech companies.
Fintech in Estonia has its roots in e-Estonia, a movement by the government to facilitate citizen interactions with the state through the use of electronic solutions. For the nationwide plan, government, financial services and telecoms providers collaborated to create a unique environment of digital services.
Today, e-Estonia provides citizens, residents as well as e-Residents with modern e-solutions making it easier to set up, run a business in Estonia and more. Estonian digital solutions include digital signatures, electronic tax claims, e-Business Register and the availability of public records online.
e-Estonia also counts among its partners Holvi, an online-only business bank from Finland, which has been providing e-Residents with digital business banking services.
For a full list of all Fintech Estonia companies, you can check out our list here.
Note please: This is the first draft of the Estonia Fintech Map, in case your Fintech is missing or wrong categorized, keep calm and send us an email.
