Author: Fintechnews Baltic

Fintech companies in Lithuania are among the best and fastest adapters to the Covid-19 pandemic. Fintech Hub LT statistics show that Electronic Money Institutions (EMIs) have made the most progress. The latter have demonstrated excellent turnover and profitability figures, which reflect very well the increasing competition for traditional financial service providers. In 2020, fintech companies operating in Lithuania generated a turnover of EUR 399 million. This is a fifth more than in the pre-pandemic year 2019, when fintech companies generated a turnover of EUR 325 million. This year’s figures are forecast to be much higher. The data sample included e-money…

vArmour, a provider of application relationship management software, has just announced the establishment of their latest development center in Vilnius, Lithuania. The development center in Lithuania will be at the forefront of vArmour’s core development efforts and become one of the company’s primary European hubs. Having evaluated numerous sites around the EMEA region, vArmour said that it chose Lithuania for its track record in cybersecurity. The center will specialise in expanding 3rd party integrations, which will enable the company to better leverage its core capabilities of discovering, observing, and controlling application, user, and data relationships across multiple IT environments. Additionally,…

Lithuanian financial intermediary SME Bank has signed a guarantee agreement with the European Investment Fund (EIF) to support local small and medium sized businesses (SMEs). The agreement is made possible under the “European Guarantee Fund”, an initiative of the EIB Group and participating EU member states to help European businesses come through the difficult times caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The fund is part of the €540 billion EU rescue package in the wake of the corona outbreak. With the EGF support, EIF will provide a 70% guarantee on a portfolio of new lending totaling up to €100 million by…

Estonian banking and financial services company LHV announced that its customers are now able to trade major crypto assets on its app. Initially, customers will be able to buy and sell eight selected major cryptocurrencies at market prices including Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Uniswap (UNI), Chainlink (LINK), Stellar Lumens (XLM), Polygon (MATIC), and Aave (AAVE). LHV said that it is opening up the possibility for its clients to trade crypto assets around the clock in the mobile app via licensed crypto exchange Bitstamp. The crypto assets of clients will be securely held on the BitGo platform, which is…

Open data startup Okredo has closed a €1 million seed funding round led by the Lithuanian Business Angels Fund and Presto Ventures, with support from Startup Wise Guys as well as several angel investors. Okredo said that this round of funding will be used to expand into new European markets, amidst a backdrop of growing regulatory support for open data. The Lithuanian startup’s SaaS platform helps SMEs assess the credibility, financial strength and sales potential of new and existing business partners and customers. With the EU’s Open Data Directive going into effect this year, businesses and other enterprises in member…

Lithuania’s buy-to-let crowdfunding platform InRento is scaling abroad by expanding its operation to Spain and acquiring Estonian real estate marketplace BitOfProperty, which offers a similar service. InRento said that its expansion into Spain was a natural move as there are experienced professionals from the country’s real estate market among its shareholders. Spain has a sizeable and diverse property market, and InRento will specialise in the specific niche of short-term rental projects. Initially, their focus is on the Iberian mountain resort of La Molina and the Mediterranean region on Costa Brava in the north-east of the country. Additionally, InRento will fully…

Trustly, a global payments platform for digital account-to-account transactions, has announced a partnership with IKEA. Through the partnership, Trustly will enable IKEA’s shoppers to pay for their purchases directly from their online bank account. The collaboration also equips IKEA with a partner for future growth into additional markets as Trustly offers access to more than 30 countries through a single API integration. The partnership has initially rolled out in Austria and will extend to several other European countries in the coming months. Trustly’s global offering supports high transaction values, ensures settlement of payments, and simplifies reconciliation, addressing some of IKEA’s…

Funding activity is stalling in the Baltics’ fintech sector as startups are failing to raise considerable rounds this year, data from Fintech Global show. In the first nine months of 2021, Baltic fintech companies raised just a little over US$121 million. This is far behind the 2017 peak during which a total of US$600 million was raised, most of which from mega-rounds of US$100 million and over (e.g. Coinverco, US$120 million; and 4finance, US$325 million). So far this year, Estonia is leading the region, securing nine of the top ten fintech deals of Q1-Q3 2021, including Veriff’s US$69 million Series…

Swedish Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) platform Klarna announces it has signed an agreement to acquire shopping comparison site PriceRunner. Details of the deal were not disclosed. PriceRunner will bring new features in the form of product reviews, rich product discovery and price comparisons, daily price updates, professional tests and intelligent filtering options. Klarna will add PriceRunner’s functionality to its offering while Klarna’s retail partners will benefit from enhanced behavior insight and increased website traffic. David Fock, Chief Product Officer at Klarna said, “The acquisition will serve to strengthen our bank, card and payment services and support a competitive global landscape.…

B2B payments specialist Banking Circle announced that it has joined the Danish national intraday clearing system. Through Banking Circle as a direct clearing participant, payments businesses and banks can now pay out and collect payments locally in Denmark on behalf of their customers more quickly and at lower cost than via traditional cross border payment methods. This will enable e-commerce businesses around the world to tap into the growing Danish market. With this new clearing option, Banking Circle enables its clients to offer their customers payments and collections in Danish krone (DKK) in their own name rather than that of…

Saldo Finance, a subsidiary of Finnish Saldo Finance Plc, has been granted European Central Bank’s (ECB) specialised banking license in Lithuania. ECB’s specialised banking license will make it possible for Saldo to accept deposits, grant loans and provide funds transfer and other usual banking services with the exception of investment services. With the business volume multiplying, Saldo will be able to expand its product portfolio into other financing products. The company entered the Lithuanian market in March 2021 where Saldo started its operations by offering consumer loans and will next bring different financing solutions for SMEs. Established in 2006, Saldo…

Sweden’s credentials in sustainability and Stockholm’s vibrant fintech ecosystem are converging into a flourishing green fintech market where players are gaining traction and starting to expand globally. This booming sector is highlighted in the 2021 edition of the yearly Stockholm Fintech Guide, which depicts the state of fintech in Sweden’s capital city, outlining the key trends observed over the past year and the “next wave of fintech” innovation that’s emerging. Green fintech was highlighted as one of these growing sectors, a market that has emerged on the back of Sweden’s position as an environmental pioneer, and Stockholm’s rise into a…

Lithuanian payments startup kevin. announced that it has has secured US$10 million of new capital in a seed funding round, bringing its total funds raised to US$14 million. The funding round was co-led by OTB Ventures and Speedinvest, European venture capital investors looking to invest in early-stage technology companies in the region. Also joining the funding round were OpenOcean, Javier Perez’s Global PayTech Ventures, and angel investors including AmRest founder Henry McGovern. Kevin. said that the proceeds from this investment will be used to further develop its product offering, particularly around POS payments. The company added that the new funds…

Denmark’s payment provider Nets Group and PayAlly, a London-based payment services provider, have entered into a partnership for full issuing and acquiring processing services in the United Kingdom. Nets will deliver a full issuing services product suite, starting with a Card Management System based on the modular platform developed by TUUM, as well as tokenisation and access to Nets’ XPay Card Service. Nets will also deliver both issuing and acquiring payment authorisation and clearing, dispute management, fraud prevention and customer services. Rafal Andzejevski, CEO of PayAlly said, “We are excited by our partnership with Nets, which enables us to provide a…

Luminor Bank has partnered with Ondato, a Lithuanian provider of compliance-as-a-service, to allow companies to remotely open business accounts at the bank in Latvia. Ondato’s identification platforms will enable Luminor’s business customers to open a new account from anywhere in the world. The new solution enables remote customer identification through several levels of checks, including automated verification of customer data and documents in databases and registers. Customer biometric data is also processed as required by the laws and regulations. Remote account opening with Luminor will be available for companies registered in Latvia, the signatories of which have access to authentication…

Danish neobank Lunar announced that it has acquired Paylike, a full-stack European payment platform for an undisclosed sum. With this move, Lunar gains a gateway that will make it possible for its business customers to receive payments from their clients without having to use an intermediary. The addition of Paylike will bolster Lunar’s existing business banking offering to meet the needs of its growing customer base. Lunar made the acquisition following its €210 million Series D funding round led by Heartland which was joined by investors including Kinnevik and Tencent. On top of the acquisition of Paylike, Lunar has also…

Bank of Lithuania published the peer-to-peer (P2P) insurance guidelines, which present its assessments, insights and recommendations on InsurTech financial innovations to the financial market, potential providers of P2P insurance services and consumers. “The purpose of the guidelines is to promote secure development of financial technologies in the area of insurance by clarifying the conditions for the provision of P2P insurance services and creating possibilities for consumers to use the new service, by emphasising its differences from conventional insurance services and by indicating risks,” said Jekaterina Govina, Director of the Financial Market Supervision Service of the Bank of Lithuania. The Bank…

The international Fintech Inn 2021 is organised by Lithuania’s Agency for Science, Innovation and Technology (MITA) is back on 21-22 October 2021 in a fully virtual format. The event aims to bring together 250+ enterprises and start-ups, as well as 1000+ investors, policymakers, entrepreneurs and technology leaders from all over the world to exchange knowledge and discuss topics from green finance to startup media. A strong B2B matchmaking and networking component will complement the conference’s panel discussions and keynote speeches with the theme “Spin the Energy of Fintech”. Industry experts will address topics such as open banking, DeFi, AML/KYC, cybersecurity,…

Juni, a Swedish-based banking platform for e-commerce and online marketing companies, has secured US$52 million in funding led by EQT Ventures, to add to the US$21 million already raised from their Series-A round in late June this year. This boosts Juni’s Series A round to US$73 million and takes the total funding to date to US$76 million. EQT Ventures joins Partners of DST Global, Felix Capital, FJ labs and Cherry Ventures in backing Juni. The company will use the funds to triple the number of its employees by recruiting 120 more employees in the next 12 months to build their…

Latvia’s Board of the Financial and Capital Market Commission (FCMC) has issued a license to SIA DN Operator, the legal company that runs the Debitum investment platform. This license is for the provision of investment and ancillary services, allowing Debitum to continue to grow as an investment platform as well as develop and offer asset-backed securities to the public market. During the transitional period of three months after obtaining a license, the Debitum platform will make a key transition away from offering investments by purchasing claim rights and towards offering financial instruments―specifically, asset-backed securities (ABS). During this transition, Debitum will…