The Nordic region, comprising of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland, as well as the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Åland, is home to a dynamic fintech scene that comprises more than 1,300 companies, according to Hannah Robinson, Head of Fintech Intelligence at Copenhagen Fintech.
This burgeoning ecosystem has risen rapidly since 2016, driven by key growth factors including strong digital infrastructure and a supportive regulatory environment. Denmark, for instance, has long been recognized as one of the most digitally advanced nations in the world, while Sweden is known for being one of the pioneers of the cashless society.
Across the region, various initiatives have been introduced to support fintech innovation, including regulatory sandboxes and grants for startups. Additionally, the willingness of the Nordic population to adopt digital financial services, creating a favorable landscape for fintech to flourish.
In 2024, the Nordics’ fintech ecosystem continued to evolve, with several emerging startups gaining traction for their growth and innovative solutions. These companies are poised for continued success in 2025, building on key milestones and achievements last year.
6 Fintechs From the Nordics to Follow in 2025
Open Payments (Sweden)
Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Stockholm, Open Payments is a pioneering open banking startup designed specifically for business-to-business (B2B) payments. The company provides a platform that aggregates multiple bank application programming interfaces (APIs) into a single, unified API, enabling businesses to integrate various banking services such as domestic and cross-border payments, account reconciliation, and cash management, directly into their existing systems like enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and financial applications.
Trusted by leading ERP systems and providers, including Monitor ERP, Treasury Systems, Juni Technologies, Bjorn Lunden, and Speedledger, Open Payments has experienced remarkable growth. In 2024, the company tripled its transaction volumes, doubled revenue, and achieved full coverage of the Dutch B2B banking landscape. Just last month, it secured EUR 3 million to accelerate growth, support product development, and advance its mission to simplify and enhance B2B payments across Europe.
Open Payments has also been enhancing its product offering, recently launching cross-border payment capabilities, real-time access to rates for streamlined bookkeeping, and same-day settlements embedded directly in the financial systems.
With strong momentum and ambitious plans, Open Payments is poised for even greater innovation and European expansion in 2025.
Lunar (Denmark)
Founded in Aarhus, Denmark, in 2015, Lunar is a digital challenger bank offering a comprehensive mobile-based financial platform. The company provides a variety of services for personal and business banking, including bank accounts, payment cards, financial management tools, insurance, investing, loans, and most recently, cryptocurrency trading – all designed to deliver a seamless, mobile-only banking experience tailored to modern consumers and businesses.
Lunar, which received its banking license in 2019, claims more than 950,000 private and business customers across Denmark, Sweden and Norway, including 25,000 entrepreneurs who use Lunar Business to manage their business finances.
In 2024, the company reached a number of milestones, raising a total of EUR 50.9 million through multiple rounds to support its ongoing growth and expansion efforts. In December, it span off its banking-as-a-service (BaaS) division into a standalone entity, Moonrise.
Moonrise aims to simplify Nordic financial connectivity by providing seamless clearing infrastructure access to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden through a single API. It builds on Lunar’s rapidly growing Banking Services, which processed over 10,000 transactions daily and supported EUR 5 billion in transaction volume run rate at the time. The BaaS service has attracted significant interest from international challenger banks and fintech startups, inking partnerships with firms including Saldo Bank, Trustly, TrueLayer, PPRO, and Currencycloud, a Visa-owned company.
Lunar has also made significant progress towards profitability. Customer activity, as measured by transactions, nearly doubled in 2023, while the company’s after-tax result improved by 72% YoY, reaching -EUR 55 million.
With a solid foundation, growing partnerships, and an expanding financial ecosystem, Lunar is positioned for continued momentum in 2025, building on the milestones achieved in 2024.
Pleo (Denmark)
Established in 2015 and headquartered in Denmark, Pleo is a business spend solution provider. The company delivers a comprehensive solution that’s designed to streamline expense management by cutting administrative hassles, automating expense reports, and simplifying bookkeeping.
This solution includes smart company cards with individual spending limits, enabling employees to make necessary work-related purchases while granting finance teams real-time visibility and control over expenditures. It also includes with a digital platform that features capabilities such as automated expense reporting, receipt capture via a mobile app, invoice management, and seamlessly integration with popular accounting systems like Xero, QuickBooks, and Sage.
Live across 16 markets, Pleo claims a customer base of more than 37,000 companies, and says it has witnessed remarkable growth.
In 2023, revenue surged by over 50%, driven by a 39% increase in its customer base. The number of active users also saw an increase of 37% compared year-on-year (YoY).
Among Pleo’s key markets, the Netherlands emerged as the fastest-growing, with customer growth exceeding 300% in 2023.
In 2024, the company secured a EUR 40 million debt financial deal with HSBC Innovation Banking to extend its existing credit offering into new countries, support larger transaction volumes, and offer additional currency options. It also opened new offices in Paris, Lisbon, Madrid and Chennai, positioning itself for greater expansion in the years ahead.
Doconomy (Sweden)
Founded in Sweden and in 2018, Doconomy is a leading impact fintech company providing banks with innovative tools to drive financial wellbeing and actionable sustainability. These digital solutions are designed to integrate sustainability into everyday financial decisions, and include:
- Impact Transactions, a carbon footprint tool that measures the CO2e impact of financial transactions using the Åland Index methodology;
- Impact Finance, a goal-based savings solution that helps customers improve their financial wellbeing while fostering sustainable behaviors;
- Impact Activity, a comprehensive self-assessment tool launched in partnership with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that gives individuals clarity on their total environmental footprint; and
- Impact Education, a module which provides content and tangible tools to help reduce one’s climate footprint.
Doconomy serves over 100 clients in more than 30 different markets and has established key partnerships with renowned organizations such as Mastercard, S&P Trucost and World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Its innovative solutions have garnered widespread recognition, with Fast Company naming Doconomy the 7th most innovative company in 2022 and Wired featuring it among the world’s top 100 startups.
In 2023, it expanded its sphere of influence, acquiring Stockholm-based financial wellbeing fintech company Dreams Technology. The move established Doconomy as the world’s first holistic solution addressing both climate and social impact within the financial services industry, it says.
In May 2024, it secured a EUR 34 million Series B, marking one of Europe’s largest funding rounds in the impact fintech sector to date. Doconomy said it would use the proceeds to expand in North America, enhance its product suite, and drive broader engagement and adoption of its tools, paving the way for growth and expansion in 2025.
Gilion (Sweden)
Headquartered in Stockholm, Gilion, formerly Ark Kapital, provides growth loans and analytics to technology businesses. By leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), Gilion is able to offer non-dilutive loans with flexible terms, enabling founders to secure substantial financing while retaining control over their companies.
One of Gilion’s core innovations is its proprietary Gilion Scores and predictive analysis. This technology transforms raw business data into powerful growth analytics, offering founders real-time insights and access to loans with market competitive terms. For Gilion, it helps assess both historical and future performance, and reduce credit risk.
Gilion expanded its operations to include Sweden, Germany, Denmark and Finland in 2023. Last year, it closed a EUR 40 million equity funding, a significant investment that came on the heels of a period of strong growth, with revenue increasing fourfold YoY, and the number of companies on the Gilion platform rising eightfold.
Scaleup Finance (Denmark)
First introduced in Denmark in 2021, Scaleup Finance is a financial management platform that aims to simplify the administration of financial operations for founders, CFOs, and finance teams. The platform caters to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), helping businesses streamline their financial processes and gain strategic insights for improved decision-making.
Scaleup Finance offers a comprehensive suite of features, including management reporting, investor and board reporting, consolidated reporting, business budgeting, cashflow forecasting, financial analysis, CFO services, and bookkeeping and payroll. The platform integrates with a company’s existing systems, centralizing all financial data in one dashboard to automate and professionalize their reporting, simplify group reporting across entities, and track key performance indicators (KPI).
Most recently, Scaleup Finance launched Nume, an AI CFO for startup founders. Combining advanced AI with deep financial expertise, the solution delivers real-time financial insights, strategic recommendations and financial reports.
Scaleup Finance expanded into the UK market in 2022, achieving a 1,000% growth within the year. Last year, it raised US$8 million in a pre-Series A funding round to accelerate its growth in country. The proceeds will also be used to launch in the US, paving the way for an exciting year 2025 for the company.
Featured image credit: edited from freepik
