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…

SaltPay, a UK-based Fintech company that provides affordable and secure payment and software solutions for small and medium-sized businesses, has announced that it has acquired two Latvian firms, MeaWallet and A-Heads Consulting. This acquisition is part of SaltPay’s plan to establish a new engineering hub in Riga. MeaWallet is known for its card tokenisation platform and SoftPOS solutions, while A-Heads Consulting helps financial institutions in the Baltics to integrate and launch payment and banking solutions. With the acquisition of these two companies, SaltPay will be able to tap into their expertise and local knowledge as it expands its presence in…

Earlier this year, the Lithuanian parliament approved amendments to the Labour Code, a development which the government hopes will help attract more highly qualified technology specialists from abroad but also entice highly skilled Lithuanian citizens who have left the country to come back home. In accordance with the new provisions, highly skilled engineering, information technology (IT), physical sciences and biotechnology specialists are now eligible to lump-sum payments to help cover part of the relocation costs, the Seimas, the Lithuanian parliament, said. The program also includes a financial incentive for employers that hire highly skilled employees from abroad. The program, which…

UBS has partnered with Latvian identity verification company Regula to create a fully automated and 24/7 account opening process for new customers. Instead of real-time video interviews, which were previously required by UBS to verify new customers, the enrollment process now takes just a few minutes on the UBS Mobile Banking app. Using Regula’s identity verification solutions, UBS can recognise and authenticate documents and compare document portraits with users’ selfies to verify their identities. UBS, which also partnered with iProov, is said to be the first bank in Switzerland to enable automatic identity verification and electronic signature creation for opening bank accounts.…

Estonian crypto platform Kriptomat has partnered with UK payment gateway provider Volt to enable customers to make real-time account-to-account payments to buy, sell and exchange cryptocurrencies. Prior to integrating with Volt, Kriptomat customers used bank transfers, credit cards and e-wallets for transactions which meant that funds could take three to five business days to reach accounts. With Volt, Kriptomat users will be directed to their banking app where they can authorise payments to transfer and access funds in real-time. Founded in 2018 in Tallinn, Kriptomat has a customer base of over 500,000 users, mostly in Central and Eastern Europe. The…

Estonian cross border lending platform Mifundo has raised €1.2 million in pre-seed funding led by Opus11 VC, with angel investors LHV Bank’s Jüri Laur and Iizi Kindlustusmaakler’s Kaido Kepp. Mifundo aims to build a platform to enable people to apply for loans from banks across the European Union and is building an AI-based solution that treats the bloc as a single credit market. The platform is being developed with scientists from the University of Tartu, with the support of the European Regional Development Fund and EAS. Mifundo is headquartered in Tallinn, Estonia, and was founded in 2018 by the former…

London-based investing app Lightyear has launched business accounts in Estonia to enable freelancers and small business owners to invest in the global stock market. Estonian businesses will be able to invest in stocks and ETFs from the US and Europe through their Lightyear business accounts. Investments in Euro markets are free, while a fixed fee is charged for other markets. According to Lightyear, gains from investments on its business accounts will only be taxed when they are withdrawn from the account or distributed as dividends since investment income in Estonia is taxed in the same way as normal business income.…

Lithuanian payment processor Paysera has partnered with payments infrastructure platform Airwallex to enable its clients to send money to 149 countries and open IBAN accounts of 9 countries. Paysera is a licensed e-money institution providing payment gateways, currency conversion, payment cards, an event ticketing platform, a parcel locker network, and a finance management app. The company also announced in mid-2021 that it has partnered with German neobank N26 to offer its payment processing services in 18 European countries. Founded in 2004 in Vilnius, Paysera has one million app installs and generated EUR 13 million in revenue in 2020. The company…

The Estonian Financial Supervisory Authority or Finantsinspektsioon has granted TINV Europe, a part of the Wise group which provides online money transfer service, a license to provide investment and ancillary services in the country. Wise is now allowed to accept securities orders and send them, execute securities orders in the name of clients or in its own name, and trade with securities on its own account. The company can also hold and manage the securities of clients, and provide services relating to foreign exchange if they are linked to the provision of investment services. Wise says that it hopes to…

UK-based cross-border payments platform ArcaPay has entered the Latvian market to provide SMEs with trading partners outside the eurozone an alternative to commercial banks. ArcaPay specialises in cross-border payment, foreign exchange and currency risk management solutions. Its services are built for importing and exporting businesses that handle foreign currencies in their business, e.g. when paying suppliers abroad. Founded in London in 2011, ArcaPay says that it serves clients in over 20 countries and offers them payments in over 30 currencies to more than 100 destination countries. Latvia is the third country the company has expanded into, with the second being…

Striga, formerly known as Lastbit, is the first company to be awarded a virtual asset service provider (VASP) license in Estonia under the amended Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Prevention Act. Founded in 2018, Striga is building a crypto-native banking as a service platform for card issuing, IBANs, managed crypto wallets with custody and trading, and compliance. The company has raised US$3 million in seed funding from Y Combinator and Brazilian venture capital firm Bossanova so far. The license approval indicates that Striga has been able to meet the Estonian Financial Intelligence Unit’s (FIU) enhanced regulations which came into force…

The central bank of Latvia’s semi-annual “Payment Radar” report found that the ratio of non-cash and cash payments in the country stood at 71% to 29% as at August 2022. The ratio of cash and non-cash payments in the previous February 2022 report was 74% to 26%. Cash availability is a matter of public interest in Latvia, especially in the last two years given the country’s proximity to the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Public satisfaction with regards to the possibility to withdraw cash from bank accounts remained stable in the latest report, with 84% of those surveyed being completely or rather satisfied…

Lithuanian financing platform SME Finance has opened for business in Finland to provide loans to smaller businesses, including those with trading histories of under two years. Finland has a highly concentrated banking sector, with the top three banks controlling 80% of the business market — leading SME Finance to believe that its digital-first solutions will appeal to local businesses. SME Finance’s business in Lithuania has provided more than €1 billion in working capital to over 2,000 growing businesses, primarily in the Baltics. The company is planning further expansion in 2022 in the Netherlands, Spain, and Germany. Matias Peltoniemi, SME Finance’s…

The Nordic-Baltic eID Project (NOBID) is leading a consortium of six countries—Denmark, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Latvia and Norway—to deliver a cross-border payments pilot aligned with the aims of the European Commission’s EU digital identity wallet program. The consortium’s proposal to be one of four EU digital identity wallet pilots focuses on payments, one of the top priority use cases in the EU’s digital ID wallet vision. The EU digital identity wallet is a biometrically-secured app that, when it comes into being, will allow citizens across the continent to easily verify their ID, access services and store sensitive digital documents. NOBID’s…

15 fintech companies – five from the Baltic region and 10 from the Nordic region – were selected to participate in Mastercard Lighthouse FINITIV’s 2022 fall programme. Since its launch in 2018, the Mastercard Lighthouse FINITIV programme has been the definitive showcase of trends in Baltic and Nordic fintech with alumni like Doconomy and Aiia. The Fall 2022 programme’s main theme is “smarter payments” since many of the selected startups are focused on enhancing payment transactions through smart solutions, loyalty, transaction monitoring and fraud prevention. Meet the five Baltic companies selected for the Lighthouse Fall Class Of 2022: Latvia To…

Fairown, an Estonian fintech company that offers products-as-a-service to banks, brands, and retailers, is expanding its offerings in the Lithuanian consumer electronics market by partnering with local bank Inbank and retail consumer electronics company Topo Centras to launch the solution TOPO FLEX. The fintech’s suite of software and services allow brands to offer products for monthly subscriptions and manage the entire product life cycle from purchase to periodic renewals, repurposing, and recycling. This allows companies to participate in the circular economy by sustainably producing, consuming and reusing products, thereby reducing both excessive waste and the need for raw materials by…

Latvian flag carrier airBaltic has concluded the issuance of a non-fungible token (NFT) collection with 14 tokens issued on NFT marketplace OpenSea, each listed at a fixed price of 0.1 Ether. The fourteenth NFT in airBaltic’s City Collection is a digital art piece of Riga, the largest city and capital of Latvia. airBaltic became the world’s first airline to issue NFTs in April 2021 when it issued limited collector NFTs showcasing an individual Airbus A220-300 with its registration, as well as a piece of art of the ancient town Kuldīga. The airline previously launched a NFT collection called Planies comprising 10,000…