Visa announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Tink, a Swedish open banking platform, for 1.8 billion Euros (US$2.2 billion). Tink will retain its brand and current management team, and its headquarters will remain in Stockholm, Sweden. The combination of Visa’s proven infrastructure and sustained investment in resilience, cybersecurity and fraud prevention with Tink’s APIs, technology and customer relationships is expected to help accelerate the adoption of open banking in Europe by ensuring a secure, reliable platform for innovation. As a result, consumers can better control their financial experiences, including managing their money, financial data and financial goals.…

CLOUDEON, a Denmark-based cloud solutions provider, announced that it has expanded its operations in Lithuania with an office in Kaunas, the second largest city in Lithuania. For CLOUDEON opening an additional office in Lithuania means securing a continued stream of the specialised knowledge needed to run and develop CLOUDEON’s cloud solutions and cloud automation platform, OpsAI. The Vilnius office has already hired the first 9 employees for Kaunas and they expect to double the amount next year. The new staff will primarily consist of cloud engineers, and CLOUDEON expects the Lithuanian cloud talent to appreciate the opportunity to work in…

Checkout.com, a London-based cloud-based payments solutions provider, announces the acquisition of Estonian software development firm Icefire. The acquisition of Icefire and their 110 technology engineers will join Checkout.com’s global technology teams to accelerate the delivery of key products and features. The Tallinn office will become Checkout.com’s second-largest engineering hub, after its headquarters in London, UK. The payments company helps global enterprises achieve better performing payments to drive more revenue and deliver better customer experiences through a customisable platform. Customers of the company include the likes of Klarna, Revolut, and Wise. To fuel its product and market growth, Checkout.com has invested…

Noviti Finance, a provider of alternative business financing, has received an investment of €700,000 from Belgian private equity fund Helenos. The company said that the new funds will be used to strengthen its position in the local market but also accelerate international expansion. Established three years ago, Helenos aims to strengthen the capital base of financial intermediaries focused on supporting micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). The fund benefits from the support of the European Investment Fund (EIF) and several major Western European banks to promote long-term economic growth and social inclusion by encouraging entrepreneurship. Helenos is managed by Inpulse,…

Global professional services company Accenture has announced plans to establish a new ICT service center (Advanced Technology Center) in Lithuania’s capital, Vilnius. The center will open later in 2021 with the recruitment of a few dozen employees and the number of staff is expected to grow to a couple of hundred over the next few years. The new Vilnius office marks a significant expansion for Accenture’s operations in the Baltic states, which began in 2002 with the opening of an advanced technology center in Latvia, where Accenture employs a staff of more than 1,800 IT professionals. The center will focus…

Icelandic digital banking and finance solutions developer Meniga has signed a new partnership agreement with Nordea, a financial services groups in the Nordics, to continue the integration of its cashback rewards platform within the latter’s mobile banking app in Sweden. According to the agreement, Nordea will continue to offer personalised cashback rewards, which are tailored to individual spending profiles, to its customers in Sweden. Through the multi-bank platform, banks can seamlessly integrate, via Meniga’s cloud-based API, cashback rewards directly into their mobile banking applications, and provide their customers with various personalised, cashback rewards and discounts from retail brands. The platform…

adesso, a Swiss consulting and IT service provider, announced that it has set up a new Nordics subsidiary in Finland ahead of its expansion into the Northern European countries. The firm plans to expand its footprint to Scandinavia and the Baltic States beginning in Finland. adesso Nordics focuses initially on the core industries of banking and insurance as well as manufacturing industry, automotive and lottery in Northern Europe. In addition, adesso Nordics brings the German experience, skills and capacity for SAP S/4HANA transformations available to the Nordic markets. The market is expected to transfer towards the new version of SAP…

Dreams, a Swedish provider of behavioural and engagement banking solutions, announced the launch of its financial wellbeing platform in partnership with Ukrainian commercial bank UKRSIBBANK BNP Paribas Group. The company’s financial wellbeing platform is now embedded into UKRSIBBANK’s mobile banking app, giving its 2 million customers across Ukraine access to a full range of additional functionalities from which they can set and achieve money-saving goals through clever, automated saving features, in addition to nudges and hacks. The integration will help UKRSIBBANK to revamp its digital banking offering with a more personalised and engaging user experience, which will drive customer satisfaction…

Over the past year, Latvia, Zimbabwe and Israel have witnessed the highest surge in fintech interest worldwide, an analysis by the Fintech News Network found. Latvia considered as one of the most startup-friendly countries in the world Google Trends data between April 2020 and April 2021 show that search queries for fintech and related topics including mobile payments, blockchain, open banking, insurtech and virtual banking, saw the strongest growth in Latvia. This comes on the back of a booming fintech sector and new favorable regulation to be introduced. Boasting 118 fintech startups, Latvia has leveraged its established legacy as a…

Lithuanian payment processor Paysera announced that it has integrated the German neobank N26 into its payment gateway and this service will cover 18 European countries. Now merchants that Paysera provides payment processing services to, will be able to accept payments via the N26 app. The fintech company launches processing of payments via N26 to merchants in Germany, Austria, Ireland, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Luxembourg, Slovenia, Greece, Slovakia, and Malta. From now on, buyers can pay via N26 at almost 10 thousand merchants which support payment initiation from the buyer’s account which is an…

Civinity, a Lithuanian facility management and engineering groups in the Baltics, announced the launch of an investment management firm Pentaframe Capital that will focus on investments into real estate, facility management, and smart city tech startups. In the following five years, the firm plans to invest up to €15 million into proptech projects across Europe. Each year, Pentaframe Capital plans to allocate between one and five million euros for investments into proptech startups that develop smart solutions in facility management, data management, improved customer experience, process automation, and other related areas. Investments into a single project will vary from thousands…

A feasibility study carried out by the Bank of Lithuania has shown that one of the key elements in open banking, the account information service, could be used in supervision of electronic money and payment institutions (EMIs and PIs). The feasibility study analyses the account information service and its use for supervisory purposes. This service would allow learning in real time what amounts of customer funds and with which credit or other financial institutions are held by EMIs and PIs, without the need to wait for quarterly financial reports to be submitted to the Bank of Lithuania. By combining open…

The central bank of Sweden Riksbank pilots phase two of its e-krona project with Swedish bank Handelsbanken and TietoEVRY, a Finnish IT software and service company providing IT and product engineering services. The pilot project run by the Riksbank aims to assess the possibilities of introducing a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). The e-krona pilot is therefore moving on from only having simulated participants to cooperation with external participants in the test environment. In this second phase, one aspect the Riksbank hopes to investigate is how well the e-krona’s technical platform works when integrated with the internal systems of a…

The Bank of Lithuania has penned a Dear CEO letter to the managers of electronic money and payment institutions operating in Lithuania to strengthen its compliance culture. The Dear CEO letter is one of the supervisory instruments planned for this year which is one of the strategic directions of the Bank of Lithuania for 2021-2024. There are currently 81 electronic money institutions and 52 payment institutions operating in Lithuania and the central bank plans to conduct inspections in 70 of them this year. Jekaterina Govina noted that often electronic money and payment institutions start to develop their internal control mechanisms only when…

Latvia has announced plans to develop two national policies to support the startup ecosystem; a national startup support policy, as well as a dedicated fintech strategy to support the rapidly-growing vertical. The country is named one of the most startup-friendly countries in the world by Index Ventures thanks to existing supportive legal environments, and the addition of these two policies is expected to strengthen its position. A focus is also placed on supporting the fintech sector specifically. The EU’s fastest-growing startup is a fintech from Latvia, and the country is home to other major European fintech companies, such as Mintos,…

Sweden’s open banking platform Tink continues its expansion across Europe with the acquisition of FinTecSystems, a German open banking infrastructure fintech, powering over 150 banks and fintechs in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The acquisition of FinTecSystems is conditional upon approval from the national competent authorities. Tink said in a statement that this acquisition builds on the €175 million investment that it had secured through two funding rounds in 2020, and complements its organic growth strategy to enhance its platform, increase connectivity and expand its product offering across Europe. Following the acquisition, FinTecSystems will continue to serve new and existing customers…

Home to one of the largest and best-known tech ecosystems in Europe, Sweden is now emerging as a fintech powerhouse, counting nearly 400 companies that use technology and digital platforms to support, enable or innovate banking and financial services, according to data from Invest Stockholm, the official investment promotion agency of the city. Some of these companies are now world leaders in their own industry, while others are rapidly expanding overseas. To get a sense of the Sweden’s most innovative and successful fintech companies, we look today at seven fast-growing Swedish fintech companies and their recent developments. For this list,…

Financial Software and Systems (FSS), a global provider of integrated payment products and a payment processor, is partnering with Zwipe, a Norway-based paymets fintech, to bring biometrics payment cards to issuers globally. Both entities will collaborate closely, offering greater value to customers by combining FSS’s Unified Issuance Platform and Zwipe Pay One biometric card capabilities, supported by Zwipe’s fast-growing global network of card manufacturing partners. As part of this collaboration, FSS will offer Zwipe Pay ONE biometric payment cards globally. The initial focus will be in those markets where contactless is bringing considerable benefits in the area of financial inclusion…

​EstateGuru, an Estonian marketplace for short-term, property-backed loans, announced a funding round on equity crowdfunding platform Seedrs up to the initial value of €1 million in order to fund its technology roadmap and expansion plans. The campaign launched in private mode for pre-registered investors on 5 May 2021 and gathered €580,000 in a matter of hours. EstateGuru had exceeded its first funding target of €350,000 on Seedrs by 261% in June, 2020. Funds from that round were used in three strategic areas namely for geographical expansion, delivering an extensive technology roadmap and developing the area of capital markets and institutional…

Launchpad Capital, a new early-stage venture capital firm led by long-time San Francisco-based fintech investor and entrepreneur Ryan Gilbert, will be investing in early-stage Lithuanian startups targeting North America. The firm plans to target 5 early-stage investments in 2021 ranging in size from US$100,000 to US$2 million. Launchpad Capital has appointed former Invest Lithuania’s fintech advisor Dominykas Stankevičius as its Lead Investment Associate in the Baltic region, based in Vilnius. US market entry is among the more difficult challenges facing Baltic startups that seek global expansion. Only 15% of Lithuanian-based fintech startups consider the US market as a viable target…