Ten years ago we probably haven’t even thought of the possibility to order a bank card online and that there will be no longer need for us to go to the bank unit where, in the end, the number of cash operations will decrease significantly. Banks are undergoing transformation, and their digitisation is faster than ever before. And it is bringing changes to us all. It is no coincidence that this is also one of the hot topics of this year’s Fintech Inn, the largest financial technology conference in the Nordic countries and the Baltic States. Digitalisation is inevitability, not…

Iceland’s financial services industry has changed rapidly over the past couple of years with fintech solutions at the forefront of these changes. Innovative fintech solutions are provided by the three largest commercial banks in the country, namely Landsbankinn, Íslandsbanki, and Arion Bank, but also by a growing list of independent businesses and startups which are leveraging cutting-edge technologies including artificial intelligence and blockchain to reinvent the sector. The following are 9 fintech startups in Iceland to keep a close eye on. Meniga Founded in 2009, Meniga provides white-label digital banking solutions. Its award-winning products enable the world’s largest financial…

Currently, Danske Bank employs 3,725 employees and the average salary is 2,500 euros. The original interview was published in 15min.lt by Ernetas Naprys. Danske Bank has created more jobs than the two major banks operating in the country taken together. According to the state social insurance fund (Sodra), it is the fifth largest employer in Lithuania paying the highest wages. Giedrius Dzekunskas, manager of Danske Bank IT Centre in Lithuania, remembers that the original intention was to hire 350 employees. “But jobs go to where they are done,” he said. When you enter through the office door, you find yourself in a…

Financial Times’ fDi Intelligence division announced the list of 30 cities that have attracted the most greenfield Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) projects of tech startups per capita during the years 2016-2018. Vilnius was ranked as the leading city and outranked cities like Singapore, Tel Aviv, Berlin and London, which came in second. The Tech Start-up FDI Attraction Index 2019 measures at the city level the number of greenfield FDI projects made in the software and IT services sector per 100,000 inhabitants. Although London attracted the largest overall number of projects, it scored only 0.875 on a per-capita basis while Vilnius firmly came forward with 1.006.…

Over the past years, Finland’s fintech industry has been growing rapidly. Today, the nation is home to roughly 160 fintech companies covering a wide range of areas including payments, cryptocurrencies, blockchain, insurance, security and compliance, APIs and platforms, data and analytics, investing, wealth management, and more, according to data from Helsinki Fintech. Startup100, a platform that tracks startup companies’ online marketing activities and performance, has released the latest edition of its top 100 Finnish startups list, among which, nine fintech, insurtech and proptech startups. The following companies are the nine fintech, insurtech and proptech startups that made the list and…

Vilnius Factoring Company, a private lending company in Lithuania, has signed a cooperation agreement with the European Investment Fund (EIF) to issue microloans of up to €25,000. Micro-enterprises and farmers in Lithuania can now benefit from non-banking business funding opportunities under the EU Programme for Employment and Social Innovation (EaSI). The company is issuing microloans up to a total of €10 million with a guarantee from the EIF. The agreement is backed by the Juncker Plan’s European Fund for Strategic Investments, which allows the European Investment Bank Group to invest in higher-risk operations. The aim of the EaSI programme is…

One year in the market, and the real estate investment start-up Profitus is already counting its achievements and envisaging future challenges. The crowdfunding platform Profitus just raised over €5,315,000 and funded 28 real estate projects. The founder and head of Profitus, Viktorija Vanagė, is glad that one year was enough to achieve great results and earn the trust of investors and real estate developers. ‘Trust and experience are crucial in the financial sector, so our team is very happy that we managed to achieve great results and become the youngest and one of the leading participants in this market. There…

The Estonian government approved the e-Residency 2.0 action plan at a Cabinet meeting last Thursday, with the objective of making the e-Residency program more secure, more beneficial for Estonian entrepreneurs, and more convenient for the e-residency community. Prime Minister Jüri Ratas said that the results of this year’s e-Residency program have proven that the program itself is sustainable and successful in involving entrepreneurs from all over the world. “Although we are grateful for the support of the e-residency community, there is still a lot to do to make this program even more convenient and beneficial for them,” Ratas said. “The…

Nets, a European PayTech company and Mastercard  announced that Mastercard has entered into agreement to acquire Nets’ account-to-account based services including clearing and instant payment services, and e-billing solutions for €2.85 billion. The transaction is fully aligned with Nets’ European strategy to focus on its strong and scalable businesses within merchant services (Merchant Services) and processing (Financial & Network Services). Bo Nilsson, Group CEO of Nets, said: “Over the past five years, Nets has built a strong account-to-account payments platform with a global growth opportunity. However, to fully unlock its international growth potential beyond Nets’ existing geographical footprint requires the…

The Bank of Lithuania has signed a contract for programming the world’s first digital collector coin which, together with its physical version, is expected to be issued at the beginning of 2020. “We are moving from an idea to its implementation: we have clear technological solutions, a vision of what its physical coin will look like and we already know who will be responsible for its creation. Aiming to create such a unique innovation in numismatics, we have to finish all the work in a timely manner, while pursuing the highest standards,” said Egidijus Paleckis, manager of the Digital Collector…

Lithuania is following on the steps of its Baltic neighbor Estonia and introduced an e-residency program for foreigners. According to a report by LRT, the Lithuanian government has passed a legal amendment allowing foreign nationals to obtain the status of e-resident starting January 2021. E-residents will receive a digital identity identification that will give them online access to a range of administrative, public, and commercial services. These will be able to set up companies, open bank accounts and declare taxes online. According to Eimutis Misiunas, Lithuania’s interior minister, the application procedure for the e-resident status, handled by the country’s migration…

In recent years, the Danish fintech sector has experienced significant growth, facilitated by a highly educated and digitally literate population, the support of specific government policies aimed at promoting financial innovation, and the development of Copenhagen as an international fintech hub. The Danish ecosystem has evolved massively over the last three years and the entrepreneurs that started their ventures within this timeframe are now seizing global markets or building solutions with large financial corporations. Last year, Denmark welcomed its first fintech unicorn when Tradeshift, a cloud-based business network and platform for supply chain payments, closed a 250 million Danish kroner…

Danske Bank A/S, DNB Bank ASA, Nordea Bank Abp, Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB (publ), Svenska Handelsbanken AB (publ) and Swedbank AB (publ) are moving forward and have established a joint venture company to develop a platform for handling KYC (Know Your Customer) data. The European Commission has given its approval in accordance with the EU merger control rules. The joint venture company is preparing for its first commercial launch in 2020. The company is autonomous and will initially offer KYC services to the market concerning large and medium-sized companies based in the Nordic region. “The collaboration between all banks has…

Money 20/20 Europe, a global event that celebrates the intersection between money and technology, concluded its 2019 run in Europe last month, held in Amsterdam, Netherlands. One of the highlights there was a presentation by Finance Estonia, a financial sector cluster organisation merging 100 private and public companies. Estonia has been deemed as one of the most interesting areas to observe the marriage between government and technology, and fintech naturally falls into that equation. Estonia after all, is seen as something of a startup paradise. Thanks to Estonia’s friendly approach towards startups, there were 413 startups in Estonia in 2017, which is deemed…

LBChain is the world’s first blockchain-based sandbox developed by a financial market regulator, the Bank of Lithuania. The platform was developed through a pre-commercial procurement and is now opening up to international start-ups as well as financial and FinTech companies to test their solutions on the LBChain. The project combines the creation of innovative blockchain-based solutions with supporting their application in the financial sector as well as improving the quality of regulatory requirements and attracting foreign direct investment. To create the LBChain platform, the Bank of Lithuania invoked last year service providers selected through a pre-commercial procurement. The LBChain project is divided…

UAB Workpower has become the first company allowed by the Board of the Bank of Lithuania to enter the Bank of Lithuania’s regulatory sandbox and test a peer-to-peer insurance platform. “We believe that peer-to-peer insurance services could become a cutting-edge way to protect consumers’ interests related to their owned or managed assets. Testing this innovation in a live environment will help us to assess consumer risks associated with such activities and make decisions on the existing regulation or the need for a legal framework,” said Marius Jurgilas, Member of the Board of the Bank of Lithuania. The peer-to-peer (P2P) insurance…

The Nordic and Baltic region is poised to become a fintech powerhouse, but challenges related to access to capital, achieving scale and reach, and regulation must be addressed, found a new survey. Launched during Money20/20 in Amsterdam earlier this week, the report provides a review of the current position and future trends in Nordic and Baltic fintech based results of an industry-wide survey and extensive interviews with industry stakeholders including banks, fintechs, regulators, accelerators and innovators. The survey found that 68% of respondents believe that the region is home to some great ideas and gaining in confidence, 14% up from…

Bank of Lithuania issued three new electronic money institution licences. The first electronic money institution licence was granted to UAB Verse Payments Lithuania, a subsidiary of the US company Verse Technologies, Inc. The company plans to carry out activities in Lithuania and other EU Member States and offer its customers a variety of digital financial services. The second electronic money institution licence was issued to Wittix UAB, which plans to offer Lithuanian consumers a new mobile payments app and an e-wallet, allowing them to make payments with their smartphones. The only beneficial owner of the company is an Israeli citizen.…

The Estonian government has passed a bill that tightens the regulation on granting virtual currency activity licenses to providers active in the sale and purchase of virtual currencies as well as those who provide virtual currency wallet services, this is according to a press statement from the Ministry of Finance Estonia’s minister of finance Martin Helme says the move represents a significant step forward in preventing money laundering, the financing of terrorism, and other criminal activities in connection with cryptocurrencies. “We have learning our lesson from the banking sector the hard way, and we must now deal with new international…

Evarvest, a Lithuania-based startup established with a goal of uniting the world’s stock exchanges and making them more widely accessible, reveals plans to launch a unique trading solution addressed to the next generation of investors. The soon-to-be-released app will provide users with an easy to use, transparent and low-cost way to access stocks, bonds and ETFs in over 30 stocks markets around the world. Evarvest has already confirmed commission-free access to the US stock market which is the largest in the world. The solution developed by Evarvest doesn’t look like traditional trading apps. With its functional and user-friendly interface, easy…