In Estonia, blockchain and cryptocurrency is the most prevalent and advanced vertical of the fintech sector, representing more than a fifth of all Estonian fintech startups, a new map released by the Fintech News Network reveals. The Fintech Estonia Startup Map 2023, which gives an overview of the Estonian fintech startup ecosystem, shows that the Baltic country is seeing the rapid development of its blockchain and crypto sector which today comprises 30 companies. The figure makes the vertical the biggest in the country’s fintech industry. One prominent player in the market is Guardtime, a cybersecurity provider that uses blockchain systems…

The main institutional actors in Lithuania’s Fintech ecosystem signed a Memorandum of Understanding confirming the National Fintech Guidelines for 2023-2028. The Guidelines, which consist of five separate directions, are aimed at improving the conditions for businesses and continuously developing an open, transparent and secure regulatory framework. The Guidelines were drafted under the supervision of Lithuania’s Ministry of Finance, acknowledging the strategic importance and potential of the sector to the country’s economy. Today, the country is the largest Fintech hub in the EU by licences issued. It is also one of the lowest risk jurisdictions globally, according to the Basel AML…

AMLYZE, a Vilnius-based RegTech firm specializing in anti-financial crime solutions for FinTechs, neo-banks, and crypto businesses, has successfully concluded a $1 million pre-seed investment round. The round was led by Practica Capital, with participation from the Firstpick accelerator and venture capital fund. The funding will be used to scale AMLYZE’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business, facilitate international expansion, and introduce advanced functionalities to its core product offering. With a current client base primarily located in the Baltic States and the United Kingdom, AMLYZE is experiencing a surge in demand for its transaction monitoring, risk assessment, and case investigation solutions. The global scale…

After the amendments to the Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Prevention Act took effect on 15 March 2022, the validity of 389 authorisations has expired, either based on the decision of the Financial Intelligence Unit or at the request of the service providers. As of 1 May 2023, there were 100 active authorisations in Estonia for the provision of virtual asset services. Following the entry into force of the enhanced requirements in the Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Prevention Act, service providers abandoned nearly 200 authorizations. In addition, the Financial Intelligence Unit revoked almost the same number of authorisations due…

Funderbeam, an Estonian angel investing and trading platform, has received US$40 million investment led by Irish Venture capital firm VentureWave. VentureWave said that it will take an active and strategic leadership role in scaling Funderbeam’s technology across venture assets. The group now has an evolved US market entry strategy through Vestiver, the institutional venture platform. Following the completion of the transaction, the group will target the entire life cycle of global venture investments and secondaries, from early-stage angel funding until pre-IPO secondaries. Funderbeam will continue to serve investor networks and provide Private Market as a service. Following the transaction with…

Estateguru has announced that the Estonian Financial Supervision and Resolution Authority (Finantsinspektsioon) has granted the platform its European Crowdfunding Service Providers for business (ECSPR) licence, allowing it to operate as a crowdfunding service provider across all European Union (EU) member states under unified rules. Estateguru was the first crowdfunding platform to be regulated in several markets, including Lithuania, Finland and the United Kingdom. The granting of the new Pan-European licence, serves to confirm that the company is fully compliant with all of the recently introduced regulations, and that its internal processes and procedures meet the financial standards necessary to operate…

GovTech Innovation Bank is a pool of digital innovations – products, services – developed or planned to be launched by companies, startups, academia, or other innovation teams. Registered innovations will be presented to public sector organizations that plan to improve internal processes, products and services or develop data driven policies. Registered digital innovations will have an opportunity to be: tested and adapted in the public sector through the Challenge Series programme organized by GovTech Lab Lithuania, presented at the GovTech Leaders 2023 conference, GovTech Academy and other events. The main criteria for innovations to be registered in the GovTech Innovation…

Despite turbulent market conditions, the Lithuanian fintech sector demonstrated resilience in 2022, recording strong revenue growth and sustained startup funding activity, new data from Invest Lithuania, the country’s agency for foreign direct investment and business development, show. The Fintech Landscape in Lithuania 2022-2023 report, released earlier this month, provides an overview of the Lithuanian fintech industry, sharing the latest trends emerging in the sector and presenting the latest data, success stories, and market expectations for what is coming next in the sector. According to the report, though 2022 was a trying year for the Lithuanian fintech sector, marked by Russia’s…

With 19 insurtech startups, Sweden is the biggest insurtech market in the Nordics, hosting 60% of all of the region’s insurtech companies, a report by Sollers Consulting, an international operational advisory and software integrator, reveals. The Nordic Insurtech Report, released on September 28, 2022, looks at the insurtech landscape in Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark, examining the different startups in the ecosystem, their business models and value propositions. The study identified 31 insurtech startups across the region, with Sweden taking the lion’s share in terms of company country, followed by Finland with five insurtech companies, Denmark with four, and Norway…

Fintech Fintech company Saldo Bank UAB has announced the launch of banking operations in Lithuania. Having built regulatory readiness after obtaining a specialised bank licence from the European Central Bank, Saldo Bank will introduce term deposits and continue providing loans for Lithuanian consumers and SME customers. The company also has plans to introduce new banking services like payment cards. Therefore, the company plans to grow its local team and then expand to other countries. Saldo Bank is a  provider of responsible lending solutions in Nordics. The company’s business model and differentiation is built on its fully-automated lending engine that streamlines…

The financial technology sector in Lithuania continues to develop. There is a steady increase in the number of people employed, the turnover of companies, and more taxes are being paid. However, it is predicted that in the background of global stagnation, fintech companies will show such a rapid growth, and development resources will have to be sought by optimising operations. How to overcome perhaps the toughest challenges of the past decade will be discussed in Vilnius, at the international conference Fintech Day, organised by Rockit and the association Fintech Hub LT. One of its organisers, Liudas Kanapienis, the head of…

Motivated talent and a forward-thinking regulator – that is what a leading financial technology platform Airwallex cites among the reasons for establishing operations in Lithuania. After obtaining an electronic money institution (EMI) licence from the Bank of Lithuania, the company set up an EMEA service hub Airwallex Lithuania in Vilnius in 2022. Today, Airwallex is looking to expand its local team to support future growth in Lithuania and across the region. Global fintech Airwallex provides financial infrastructure for businesses to accept payments and move money internationally. The company’s platform offers a streamlined and cost-efficient way to manage everything from treasury…

Salv, the regtech startup founded by former Wise and Skype employees, closes a €4m seed round extension led by ffVC, with German G+D Ventures and existing investors also participating. The funds will allow Salv to further develop its modular regtech technology and support geographical expansion to new territories, including Poland. Salv’s collaborative crime-fighting technology Salv’s offering entails all the necessary AML functionality for financial services companies, such as automatically identifying and prioritising suspicious activity and processing vast amounts of data in real-time. The company’s toolset also includes its proprietary collaborative crime-fighting platform – Salv Bridge, which uses the collective power…

At the end of the day every entrepreneur wants to see how much profit they’ve made. In the world of e-commerce, nothing beats conversion when the client acts on your marketing appeal – unless a visitor buys something, is there any point in carrying on? At a time when the cost per attracted buyer keeps rising, all businesses are in stiff competition to boost their rates of conversion. Here talking about how entrepreneurs can make their first steps in the digital environment and pick cooperation partners that will care about conversion as much as they do, is the head of…

Anyfin, a Swedish scaleup that enables consumers to refinance existing loans and take control of their financial wellbeing, announced that it has completed a €30 million Series C funding round. The capital will fuel the growth of its business across Europe, as well as helping Anyfin to strengthen its product suite in existing Europe markets. The cost of living crisis has been impacting customers worldwide and is increasing at its fastest rate in 40 years. The macro environment has a massive impact on household budgets, affecting consumers’ financial wellbeing and business’ balance sheets. Since the spiral of costs started, Anyfin’s…

Technology is something that tends to introduce itself to our lives first in the realm of conversation, whether it is as the result of the announcement of a new product or a prediction by an expert as to what will come next. Following this, a select few acquire the new product or service, before it eventually finds itself in the hands of the masses. Within the blink of an eye, this new technology, which at one point felt as if it was a lifetime away, is now an integral part of our daily lives. It is this process of integration…

Vilnius-based Practica Capital announced the first closing of its €70M target size Practica Venture Capital III fund at €32M. The fund will focus on backing the Baltic founders from pre-seed to A round, making it the biggest such dedicated vehicle in the region to date. “We are in the strongest pound-for-pound tech ecosystems in Europe – the 6M populated Baltic States are consistent in producing outlier outcomes in tech and making a paramount impact for local economies,” said Arvydas Bložė, partner at Practica Capital. “Lithuanian and Latvian tech ecosystems are at an inflection point and will inevitably follow the trailblazer…

LPB Bank stands out against the background of the banks of the Baltic banking market with its financial and technological solutions, which are already successfully used by fintech companies, as well as the constant development of the technologies. The bank’s mission is to provide a full range of services to companies in the fintech industry soon, notes Staņislavs Siņakovičs, Head of the Business Development Department at LPB Bank. “Banks nowadays are in stiff competition for human resources with fintech. The financial technology sector often offers higher pay, but the future prospects of many such start-ups are difficult to forecast –…

Mastercard has announced the winners of its Lighthouse 2022 Fall Finale at the “Fintech & Impact: Born For This Moment” side event at Slush in Helsinki. Lighthouse is a collaboration network that fosters symbiotic growth between banks, fintechs and Mastercard. Meanwhile, Lighthouse MASSIV helps social impact and sustainability-focused companies scale through partnerships. Forming part of Mastercard Lighthouse, the two programs represent core foundations of Mastercard’s wider commitment to empower Baltics and Nordics startups to fulfill their ambitions at scale and speed. A total of 15 fintech companies, 10 from the Nordic region and five from the Baltic region, were selected…

Financial brokerage company Fundvest launches a new mobile application in Lithuania that provides access to the stock exchanges of the United States of America and the European Union. Using the app, users can purchase stocks and ETFs, conduct automated investing, and communicate with other application members. According to the company’s founders, the uniqueness of Fundvest is transparency and lower fees – investors can make a transaction for a fixed 0.35 percent commission fee. The company’s office, the largest in the Baltic countries, has been opened in Vilnius. It will serve customers, continue developing and improving software, cover compliance and anti-money…