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…

Latvian fintech VIA SMS Group continues to expand its presence in Asia-Pacific by investing in the development of consumer lending brand VAMO.ph in the Philippines. The decision on further strategic expansion in the region follows successful business operations in Vietnam launched in 2019 in partnership with another well-known consumer lender TWINO. Since the company’s launch in 2019, Vietnamese VAMO.vn has issued loans with a total value of more than 3 million EUR. VAMO.ph launched its operations in Philippines in the beginning of this year, and currently the company is engaged in intensive technical development to prepare for the product public…

HIPS Payment Group, an Ireland-based provider of e-commerce and mobile payment solutions, and The Payment House, a Nordic payment processor for taxi companies in Scandinavia, announced their partnership to enable payment with crypto currency in over 20,000 taxis in Scandinavia and 10,000 taxis in the UK. The two companies will leverage each other’s technologies so that consumers can easily use crypto payments at real-time transaction speeds, offering a convenient payment method not currently in use. The solution, which is planned to roll out in beta November 2021, will use the Hips Merchant Protocol (HMP) and Hips Merchant Gateway (HMP-gateway) over…

Norges Bank, the central bank of Norway, announced that it will test various technical solutions for a central bank digital currency (CBDC) over the next two years in line with the recommendations of an internal working group. The working group is of the opinion that the motivation for research into CBDCs has been strengthened. Many central banks are in the process of carrying out similar research, and several are already under way with technical testing. At the same time, payment technologies have evolved at a rapid pace, and cash usage has fallen further. The share of cash payments in Norway…

U.S.-based fintech Stripe announced that it has launched its issuing services across 20 European countries. Stripe Issuing is now available in Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and the UK. The issuing service enables users to create, manage, and distribute virtual and physical payment cards, giving businesses more control over how they spend their money. Cards created on Stripe Issuing can be programmatically controlled, with dynamic spending limits, blocked merchant categories, advanced combinations of rules, and real-time authorisations for each transaction, managed via Stripe’s Issuing API.…

Latvian bank Citadele and retail store Maxima has signed an agreement on card acquiring for almost all 1300 POS terminals in all 176 Maxima shops in Latvia in order to serve customers with lower risk of payment interruption. The partnership with Citadele will secure multi-bank POS set-up in Maxima, which splits card payment traffic between several banks and ensures higher service availability for its customers. This is in case there are technical challenges in one bank, the system will provide an opportunity to switch all payments immediately to another service provider. “Citadele is building a long-term partnership with retailers across…

Norway is home to over 120 fintech companies with the vast majority of solutions available right now focusing on mobile payments and online banking, though other segments such as data and analytics, insurtech, data and analytics, and wealthtech, are also represented, data from TheFactor, a fintech and proptech incubator and accelerator, show. Several Norwegian fintechs have grown to notable size, attracting the interest of foreign investors and expanding overseas. To get a sense of Norway’s biggest, most successful fintech companies, we’ve compiled a list of six Norwegian fintechs that have recorded strong growth, made notable strides this past year, and…

Finland is home to more than 200 fintech companies, which have raised a combined EUR 450 million in funding, and generated EUR 1.3 billion in revenue in 2019, data from industry trade group Fintech Farm Helsinki show. These fintechs have grown tremendously over the past years, with several of them expanding overseas and reaching global recognition. To get a sense of Finland’s biggest, most successful fintech companies, we’ve compiled a list of nine Finnish fintechs that have demonstrated strong growth and which deserve to be followed very closely. For this list, we’ve selected independent, private Finnish fintech companies and excluded…