Fintech Week Lithuania yesterday announced the 2020 winners of the first-ever Lithuanian Fintech Awards. The awards recognise the success stories of the past year across numerous areas in fintech, including payments, lending & investing, KYC and analytics. The awards were selected by a jury composed of Lithuanian and international experts in financial services. “As well as having optimum business conditions, a friendly and supportive regulator and a highly educated workforce, Lithuania is increasingly a place where entrepreneurs with a vision can turn their ideas into innovative solutions. It’s our pleasure to extend the first ever Lithuanian Fintech Awards to some…

The world is becoming more digital every second. There are more digital payment options than ever before. Digital wallets and financial apps are so convenient that most people would gladly swap their cash and cards for them. This isn’t just a wild guess, we have research to back it up. According to a recent finder.com survey, more than 110 million people in the United States prefer online to physical wallets. Besides the convenience, are there any other reasons to believe we can see a financial revolution in the coming decades? What can trigger this supposed revolution? How can it trigger…

Planet42, an Estonian fintech operating in Africa that focuses on providing access to mobility to the underbanked, has raised €2.2M ($2.4M). The seed round was led by Change Ventures. Private backers include Martin Villig (Bolt), Ragnar Sass (Pipedrive), Marko Virkebau (MeetFrank), Kristjan Vilosius (Katana MRP), and several other Estonian tech entrepreneurs. The company launched as CarGet in 2017 to service South Africa, a market well-known to co-founder and CFO Marten Orgna, who ran African Investments for Trigon Capital. Planet42 partners with dealerships across South Africa to offer access to a personal car to its largely underbanked clientele (9 out of…

Fintech Inn, the largest Fintech conference in the Baltic region, has been postponed to 28-29 April 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. However, the organisers have come up with an online alternative this summer. Fintech Week Lithuania, taking place on June 15-18, will be providing a virtual conference experience with scheduled, keynote speeches, panel discussions, awards and B2B meetings. The four-day virtual event is going to be free of charge for all participants. “With our conference, we want to fill the gap of not only the postponed Fintech Inn, but also of the delayed Money 20/20 Europe that would have…

Belarus is home to a growing fintech startup ecosystem that now hosts more than 100 fintech companies and applications, according to the latest Belarus Fintech Map by the Belarus Fintech Hub and the Center for Economic Research. Payments, currency converters and cash transfers, as well as B2B fintech software developers, are the two most crowded fintech segments, with about 30 solutions and companies each. In the payments space, foreign solutions such as Apple Pay and Samsung Pay are operational in Belarus, in addition to local players such as Webpay. Online investment platforms, initial coin offerings (ICOs) and blockchain, is another…

Genome, a Lithuanian fintech company that operates as a financial ecosystem for personal and business use announced that it is showing support for all businesses that will struggle with the retailing of physical goods while switching to e-commerce. For all low-risk businesses that are already in Genome and new low-risk clients, the fintech company will open a business account for free and will cancel any monthly account fees for the next 3 months as well. So business owners can kickstart and put their business on a full roll even faster than before the pandemic circumstances. Offer will greatly benefit businesses…

Today, the Lithuanian startup ecosystem, which has been demonstrating rapid development rates for some time and can boast of successful results. According to the “Startup Lithuania” database, the number of innovative businesses registered in Lithuania already reached 1021. The number of Lithuanian startups is similar to that in Estonia (1017) but is strongly ahead of Latvia (352). “A couple of years ago, the Ministry of Economy and Innovation set a very ambitious goal – to have 1000 startups in Lithuania. Although, at that time only about 380 startups were registered in Lithuania’s startup database. Today, Lithuania has something to be…

You might have seen some updates from Revolut about account migration to their new European license. Revolut’s intention is to make sure that the client experience isn’t interrupted and that Revolut can be used normal. So that Revolut is fully prepared they going to start moving the Lithuanian customers to their new licensed European entity before Brexit. We know that you’ll have some questions about this, Revolut is answering it here: What is Revolut doing to prepare for Brexit? We have been planning to make sure our users are unaffected by any Brexit outcome. We have set up a licensed…

The fall of the Soviet Union brought about more than a dozen sovereign nations, each taking a distinct path from the other. Lithuania, the first country to regain its independence on March 11, 1990, has already developed its fair share of success stories – spanning from basketball victories to its first unicorn startup – Vinted. The strides made on the intersection of business, science and technology can be best described by the three completely different fields of Photonics, Life Sciences and Fintech. A perfect storm that shaped Lithuanian Fintech While Lithuanian Photonics and Life Sciences took decades to establish themselves…

The European Commission has announced it is supporting the upcoming Global Hack, an online hackathon organised by the world’s tech community. The Hackathon is designed to rapidly develop much needed solutions in the current COVID-19 pandemic. Kai Isand, head organiser of the Global Hack, believes the event is the best example of a startup mindset and how to act quickly when facing a challenge. “This is our call to hack the crisis – not only to brainstorm solutions to prevent and stop the spreading of a highly-infectious disease but to think about how our lives will be different after this.…

The fintech sector in the Baltic states is rapidly growing on the back of proactive governments that have set sights on establishing a favorable environment for the industry to thrive. Lithuania launched a regulatory sandbox in 2017 to allow fintechs and financial services companies to test out innovative products, Estonia, the birthplace of some of the world’s leading fintechs including TransferWise and Guardtime, has embraced blockchain and electronic ID, and Latvia have seen its fintech industry grow steadily over the past years with several of its startups, including Mintos and Twino, expanding rapidly across the region. With fintech gaining speed…

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, Lithuanian government has imposed quarantine – and people in the capital Vilnius reacted with solidarity and speed. In the first week of quarantine thousands of volunteers offered their help, entrepreneurs have raised large sums for medical equipment using just online messaging, and telecommunications companies provided resources to coordinate the joint effort. The ongoing efforts of Vilnius municipality to build a tech-savvy and focused community of citizens also proved to be crucial in the face of crisis. The force that is uniting the biggest numbers of volunteers is the municipality-inspired group Gedimino Legionas (Gediminas Legion) that is raising…

Analysis of industry data by Nucoro reveals that 7% of people in work in Sweden earn over $90,000 a year or 906,000 Swedish Krona (SEK). It’s analysis also reveals a growing pool of wealthy people in Sweden, many of whom Nucoro believes are increasingly open to using digital wealth management services. There were around 200,500 millionaires in Sweden in 2018, and this is set to rise to 245,000 (an increase of 22%) by 2023. In terms of those Swedes worth $30 million or more, there were around 3,820 with this level of wealth in 2018, and this is expected to…

The Riksbank is conducting a pilot project with Accenture aimed at developing a proposal for a technical solution for an e-krona. The objective is to create, in an isolated test environment, a digital krona that is simple and user-friendly. The technical solution will be based on Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), often referred to as block-chain technology. The main aim of the pilot is for the Riksbank to increase its knowledge of central bank-issued digital krona. The Riksbank is conducting a pilot project with Accenture to develop a technical solution for an e-krona that can work as a complement to cash.…

2019 was a key year for Lithuania’s fintech sector, with the number of companies in the sector rising to more than 200 and the country being recognized as one of the most dynamic fintech hubs globally, according to a new report by Invest Lithuania, the Lithuanian investment promotion agency. Lithuania is now home to 210 fintech companies, a 24% increase compared with the previous year, and has issued 102 licenses going towards electronic money institutions (EMIs), payment institutions, and so-called special purpose banks. In 2019, the number of people employed by companies in the sector rose 30% to 3,400. The…

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,…

Like other Baltic nations, Latvia has witnessed the steady growth of a fintech scene. Today, the country is home to 50 fintech startups and has rapidly expanding blockchain and alternative lending segments, according to the Fintech Latvia Startup Map 2020. In Latvia, there are currently seven fintech companies operating in the crypto/blockchain space. These include Bitfury, a leading security and infrastructure provider, Axioma, a developer of blockchain solutions, Blockvis, a blockchain consulting and development agency, Netcore, a web development company, and Velvet, a blockchain-powered deal platform. In the peer-to-peer (P2P) lending and alternative finance space, notable Latvian startups include P2P…

The fintech landscape in the Nordic and Baltic regions continues to be one of the most successful at producing unicorns with recent examples that include TransferWise, from Estonia, and Klarna Bank, from Sweden. As we head into 2020, we look today at some of this year’s top fintech events and conferences to help you keep up with the region’s rapidly changing fintech landscape. sTARTUp Day 2020 January 29 – 31, 2020 Tartu, Estonia sTARTUp Day is the biggest festival in the Baltics, bringing together startups, traditional entrepreneurs, investors, innovators, and students. The aim of the event is to connect…

The Riksbank has implemented a public procurement of a technology supplier to the e-krona pilot project and intends to sign an agreement with consulting company Accenture. The primary objective of the e-krona pilot project is to broaden the bank’s understanding of the technological possibilities for the e-krona. The assignment entails producing a solution as to how an e-krona could function in a test environment. During the first year of the e-krona pilot project, a technical platform will be developed with a user interface that enables, for instance, payment with the e-krona from a mobile phone, a card and a watch.…

Following the assessment and proposal of the Bank of Lithuania, the European Central Bank (ECB) granted PayRay, UAB a banking licence, authorising it to receive deposits and other repayable funds. The company is currently providing factoring services and microcredits to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Having engaged in banking activities, the company intends to continue providing loans to SMEs as well as expanding its portfolio of services (e.g. online deposit collection) and geographical coverage. PayRay, UAB belongs to a holding company registered in Luxembourg. The company started its activities in Lithuania in June 2018 as a private limited liability company…