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 in September, 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 with three.…
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Anyfin, the 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 services…
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 the 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…
A.P. Moller – Maersk and IBM announced the decision to withdraw the TradeLens offerings and discontinue the platform. Starting today, the TradeLens team is taking action to withdraw the offerings and discontinue the platform, and the intent is that the platform will go offline by end of quarter one, 2023. During this process all parties involved will ensure that customers are attended to without disruptions to their businesses. Maersk will continue its efforts to digitise the supply chain and increase industry innovation through other solutions to reduce trade friction and promote more global trade. “We are deeply grateful for the…
The Helsinki Fintech Farm has published a list of 20 fintech companies in Finland that have received the most funding as of June 2022, based on funding rounds that have been shared publicly. The list of top funded fintech companies was published alongside Helsinki Fintech Farm’s annual rankings of the top startups, top scaleups and top established companies in Finland. AlphaSense, a market intelligence platform founded by Finnish founders that is now headquartered on Wall Street, tops the list with €442.3 million received so far. Payment processor Enfuce came in second place with a much lower €62 million raised so…
Swedish open banking platform Tink has made four additions to its London-based payments team with hires for variable recurring payments, payment sales, strategic account management, and delivery and solutions architecture. Firstly, Andrew Boyajian joins Tink as Head of Variable Recurring Payments from J.P. Morgan where he led product commercialisation of emerging payments and fintechs for wholesale payments in the US. Secondly, Ian Morrin joins as the new VP of Payment Sales. Morrin previously worked as a Sales Director at a wide range of companies including Bud, Expedite Growth, Phoenix51 and Clarify. Thirdly, Kevin Ward has been appointed VP Strategic Account…
Nordic financial services group SEB has created SEB Embedded, a new business unit to commercialise the banking-as-a-service concept and promoted Christoffer Malmer to head the unit. Malmer’s current role as the head of SEB’s innovation studio SEBx will be taken over by Nicolas Moch, who is currently Chief Information Officer at SEB. Svante Hedin, who is currently deputy head of FICC Markets at SEB, has been appointed the company’s new Chief Information Officer. He has a background in banking and securities trading. These changes within SEB’s tech and innovation organisation will come into effect from January 2023. “We see good…
Swedish payments company Zimpler announced plans to expand to Latin America and that it has established its regional headquarters in Sao Paulo, Brazil’s financial center. A recent study conducted by Zimpler showed that nearly half of all online consumers in Brazil have given up on an online purchase due to issues with e-commerce payment processes. This is a gap that Zimpler hopes to fill in Brazil with its account-to-account payments solution that is developed based on the Central Bank of Brazil’s PIX technology. The amalgamation of PIX and Zimpler’s solutions will streamline the transaction chain and enable instant settlement for…
Swedish bank payments platform Atlar has closed a €5 million seed round led by Index Ventures, with the participation of European venture capital firms La Famiglia VC and Cocoa. A number of angel investors also participated in the round, including Revolut’s CFO Mikko Salovaara, former Executive Vice President of Global Sales at Adyen Thijn Lamers, and N26’s CFO Jan Kemper. Atlar is a bank payments platform which enables businesses to automate their payment activities such as initiating transfers, reconciling transactions, handling direct debits, and more. Founded in 2022 by three Tink alumni, the company’s early customers include insurance company Lassie,…
The Helsinki Fintech Farm has published its annual list of the top established fintech companies in Finland, ranked based on the companies’ latest reported revenues. The Finnish fintech industry—consisting some 200 fintech startups, fintech scaleups and established companies—saw revenues growing from €1.2 billion in 2020 to €1.4 billion in 2021. ePassi, an employee benefits mobile payments platform, topped this year’s list as revenues jumped from €111 million in 2020 to €289 million in 2021. The company ranked third on the previous ranking. Digital finance services company Multitude and enterprise finance software company Basware, who topped the previous list, came in second…
Buy now, pay later (BNPL) solution provider Klarna has launched a new in-app price comparison tool to provide an alternative to Google or Amazon as a starting point for consumers’ online shopping journeys. Consumers will be able to view product results in price order, see if the price of an item has fluctuated, and also filter their search by product features, customer ratings, and shipping options. Whenever browsing a product page, a panel will show consumers everything they need to know to make a confident decision, including whether other retailers are offering a better price. At check-out, a pop-up panel…
In Europe, fintech activity is growing in virtually all countries, but performance and maturity levels are found to be the greatest in the UK and Sweden, the two countries that are now leading the region for the size of their respective fintech industry, fintech funding, the number of unicorns they house and their fintech workforce, a new analysis by McKinsey found. Looking at five key performance indicators, namely the number of fintech companies and unicorns each country has, fintech funding activity and deal counts, as well as the size of the fintech workforce, as of 2021, the study found that…
The Helsinki Fintech Farm has published this year’s list of the top fintech scaleups in the country, ranked based on the companies’ latest reported revenues. Finland’s fintech industry—which comprises some 200 startups, scaleups and established companies—saw revenue reaching €1.4 billion in 2021, up from €1.2 billion in 2020. Bitcoin marketplace LocalBitcoins, which came in third place on the previous rankings published in 2020, topped this year’s list even as revenues dipped from €23.4 million to €22.3 million. GF Money, who was not on the previous list, ranked second this year with €17.4 million in reported revenue. Cryptocurrency platform Coinmotion, whose…
Dutch payments company Adyen has selected Swedish open banking platform Tink’s real-time payments infrastructure to enable its new white-label pay-by-bank and instant bank payments solutions. Adyen’s clients will be able to allow their customers to authenticate and pay directly from their bank account without any intermediate steps. The partnership builds on the companies’ existing one in which Tink enables Adyen’s clients to instantly verify account ownership using real-time data from a user’s bank account. Adyen has launched the new pay-by-bank service in the UK, with plans to expand to multiple markets in 2023. Tink operates in 18 European markets and…
Swedish SME financing platform DBT has closed a SEK 3.1 billion (approximately €286 million) debt facility from UK bank NatWest and US alternative investment firm Värde Partners. The funding, said to be the largest investment in a Nordic SME lending startup to date, will enable the company to continue providing corporate loans to SMEs in the country. Founded in 2017, DBT’s platform leverages real-time client data to tailor funding to borrowers. The company claims to have lent more than SEK 2 billion (approximately €185 million) in the past six years and that its borrowers have outperformed other SMEs by over…
The Nordic Fintech Awards was held on 27 September 2022 during the annual Nordic Fintech Week organised by Copenhagen Fintech. Nominees for the four Nordic Fintech Award categories were shortlisted based on feedback from fintech communities in the region and six finalists were then invited to pitch to a panel at the Nordic Fintech Week. This year’s panel included fintech leaders from Tryg, Enfuce, Íslandsbanki, FIS Denmark, Citi EMEA, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Meet the Nordich Fintech Award Winners 2022:
The Helsinki Fintech Farm has published its annual ranking of the top fintech startups in Finland calculated based on the companies’ latest reported revenues. According to the report, Finland’s fintech industry—which comprises some 200 companies—saw revenue increasing from €1.2 billion in 2020 to €1.4 billion in 2021. This year’s rankings includes startups working in web3, insurance, compliance, and other fintech-related areas. Meet the top 20 Finnish startups:
Sveriges Riksbank, Norges Bank, Bank of Israel, and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) are launching Project Icebreaker to explore how central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) can be used for international retail and remittance payments. The project aims to develop a hub to which participating central banks can connect their domestic proof-of-concept CBDC system to test the technological feasibility of interlinking different domestic CBDC systems. The architecture is designed to enable immediate retail CBDC payments across borders at a significantly lower cost than existing corresponding banking systems. The project will run through the end of the year, with a final…
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…