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 – 10 from the Nordic region and five from the Baltic 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 Nordic and Baltic 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 10 Nordic companies selected for the Lighthouse Fall Class Of 2022: Sweden Finland…

Danish embedded finance startup Moneyflow has entered into a debt financing agreement with Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) provider Aion Bank to enable up to €250 million in asset-backed debt funding. The partnership is expected to accelerate the roll-out of Moneyflow’s embedded finance services across platform partners in the Nordics, as well as broader Europe. “The balance sheet support from Aion Bank is the largest single raise amount made available to a fintech of our nature in Scandinavia. We are now ready to step on the accelerator to take on the large and expanding market opportunity,” said Kim Ulf Rehfeld Thodén, Moneyflow’s…

The Finnish Ministry of Finance has awarded the Findynet Cooperative a three million euro government grant to build a pilot environment for a self-sovereign identity network to ensure the correctness of information in electronic interactions. The Findynet Cooperative aims to develop a network that ensures that digital wallets developed by different service providers are interoperable, and work seamlessly for both organisations and individuals. End-users will manage their own data and can decide for themselves what information they share about themselves with different parties to preserve their privacy. For example, this could involve electronic receipts, credit information, and proof of professional…

F10, an innovation ecosystem for fintech and insurtech with hubs in Switzerland, Singapore, and Spain, announced the launch of an incubation programme dedicated to climate fintech across the Nordics and Baltics, expanding its reach within Europe. The goal is to support these promising startups by providing training, coaching and mentoring on a variety of topics to strengthen the teams, and to secure successful business and investment opportunities ahead. The programme will also provide exposure and introductions to leading organisations, banks, corporates, fintechs, advisors, and investors. It will be run six months, built around 5 masterclasses, culminating in a demo day…

Axo, a distributor of personal finance products in the Nordic region and portfolio company of Corsair, a private equity firm targeting payments, software and business services investments in the financial services sector, announced that it has acquired Defero Defero is a digital credit-scoring and financial management platform in the Nordic region. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Founded in 2018, Defero empowers consumers to make better financial decisions through its free credit-scoring and financial management platform that is tailored to each member’s credit profile and financial needs. Defero claims to have over 400,000 users across the Nordic region.…

Copenhagen based Ageras Group announced that it has acquired Kontist, a Berlin-based neo-bank focused on the complex accounting and banking needs of Germany’s growing populations of microbusinesses and self-employed workers. “This acquisition is a critical step in Ageras’ growth,” said Ageras Co-founder and CEO Rico Andersen. “Kontist has created the best product in Europe’s largest market. It’s a one-stop financial shop for approximately 50,000 German small business owners today, and it’s perfectly positioned to become the go-to financial platform for future generations of small business owners in need of modern banking and accounting tools.” Founded in 2016 by fintech veteran…

Zimpler, a fintech company born in Sweden, announced today that it has gone live in Norway. Following Sweden, Finland, Germany, Estonia, The Netherlands, Latvia and Lithuania, Norway becomes the eighth market to offer Zimpler’s account-to-account payments solutions. The first merchant in Norway to go live using Zimpler is Scandinavian Travel Group, who are currently integrated with Zimpler in Sweden and Finland, through Vitec Travelize. Following this launch, Zimpler will continue to focus its efforts on expanding in the Norwegian market, especially in segments such as travel, e-commerce, and financial services – where instant, secure and easy payments are crucial. Zimpler…

The Lithuanian identity verification and compliance company iDenfy, joined forces with Juni, the financial management platform made for ecommerce. iDenfy’s mix of built-in identity verification and Business Verification services will protect Juni from fraud. Reduced costs, personalization, greater convenience, or speed are all factors that make ecommerce and fintech players successful in today’s digital sphere. While the benefits paint a positive picture, there’s also a riskier part to online business. According to iDenfy, cybercrime takes a toll on the fintech and ecommerce markets, making fraudsters and their crimes an issue that’s hard to tackle. Juni follows a similar approach, and…

SEB Venture Capital is making an investment in one of Europe’s fastest-growing automated savings platforms, Lysa. As part of the investment, SEB will support the company’s continued growth and international expansion. Lysa is Stockholm based and recently announced a 33 million EUR funding round. The company was founded in 2015 and has recently become one of the largest and fastest-growing automated savings platforms in Europe. With 100,000 customers and 18 billion Swedish kronor (1.7 billion euros) in assets under management, Lysa is now looking to expand into new European markets. “We’ve been following Lysa’s journey for some time as we…

Juni, a Swedish banking platform for e-commerce and online marketing companies, announced the closing of its US$206 million funding round, bringing its total funds raised to US$282 million to date. The fundraise was led by Mubadala Capital and joined by its current investors EQT Ventures, Felix Capital, Cherry Ventures, and Partners of DST Global. Additionally, Juni has also secured US$106 million in venture debt financing from TriplePoint Capital, which will be used to fuel the growth of ecommerce businesses through the Juni credit card. Juni said that with this funding, it will help e-commerce businesses build the right insights, features…

Tink, the Stockholm-based open banking platform, and Revolut, the global financial super app with more than 18 million customers worldwide, have entered into a strategic partnership for open banking technology. Tink’s payment initiation services (PIS) technology will allow Revolut users across Europe to seamlessly move money into their Revolut account. PIS enables users to connect to the bank account they want to move money from, and instantaneously authorise and complete the payment without leaving the Revolut app. Daniel Kjellén, co-founder and CEO of Tink, said: “Revolut is one of the biggest success stories of the financial services revolution, offering services…

Norway’s Signicat, a leading provider of digital identity and electronic signature solutions, is acquiring all shares in the UK-headquartered anti-fraud company Sphonic for an undisclosed sum. Existing management shareholders will reinvest a substantial part of the consideration into Signicat. Signicat has been growing rapidly in the last years, both organically and through acquisitions. The digital identity pioneer aims to be a single provider for the entire digital identity and anti-financial crime lifecycle across Europe. This includes identity solutions to support customer onboarding, authentication, e-signing, fraud management and risk management. Since 2019 Signicat has acquired five companies, including in the last…

Tink, Europe’s leading open banking platform, has announced the expansion of its open banking payments services to five new markets across Europe. Its Payment Initiation Services (PIS) product is now live in the Netherlands, Norway, Estonia, Finland and Latvia. Tink operates in 18 markets in total across Europe, connecting to over 250 million bank customers. Open banking payments, often called Pay by Bank, is a transfer of money from one bank account to another. The payment is initiated by Tink through an Application Programming Interface (API), but the user journey is completely embedded within the payment service provider (PSP) or…

SEB is entering into a strategic partnership with Humla, a fintech startup within Axel Johnson set out to drive innovation in the retail industry. Humla will develop its products and offerings on the banking-as-a-service (BaaS) platform developed by SEBx, thereby becoming its first BaaS customer. The partnership follows a period of joint exploration and collaboration between Humla and SEB’s innovation studio SEBx. Humla is on a mission to strengthen the business for the retail of tomorrow by building a new generation of financial services and loyalty products. Using SEBx’s banking-as-a-service platform, Humla will be able to embed financial services in…

Five payment acceptance startups were among the 15 selected to meet Mastercard in the Lighthouse FINITIV programme. Since its launch in 2018, Lighthouse FINITIV has created a forum for selected startups to enter partnership discussions with Mastercard and its largest Nordic and Baltic partner banks. This spring, the programme returns to Denmark, Norway and Lithuania, where once again “acceptance startups,” or startups focused on helping merchants accept payments, stood out as the most prominent theme. Since the programme’s founding, about 22 participating startups (18% of the 120 total companies admitted) have focused on payment acceptance, with the rest focusing on…

In February 2021, the second phase of the e-krona pilot project began. The aim of the work was to continue investigating and testing the technical solution developed in the project and also to investigate a potential legal framework around the e-krona. During Phase 2, the technical tests have included investigating whether and how an e-krona might function off-line, whether the performance of the tested solution is adequate, and how banks and other payment service providers could be integrated into an e-krona network. The latter has been tested in collaboration with Handelsbanken and Tietoevry. The tests have shown, for instance, that…

In an effort to support Ukrainians fleeing the conflict, Incharge, a company built using Intergiro’s Banking as a Service solution “Intergiro.3d”, has created a banking services app specifically for refugees. The app will offer free banking services and physical or virtual debit cards to all Ukrainian nationals fleeing the country following the Russian invasion. The app was released exactly one month after the invasion began, which has now resulted in over 3.7 million people seeking refuge in bordering countries, with limited possessions and documentation. These refugees who require access to banking and financial services to buy essential goods, pay bills,…

Lunar, Nordic-based fintech company focused on the future of money for consumers and businesses, announced a €70 million Series D-2 funding round. It brings the Series D total to €280 million. Existing investors participated in the funding round following on the heels of last year’s Series D led by Heartland alongside Kinnevik, Tencent and IDC Ventures. Ken Villum Klausen, founder and CEO of Lunar, said: “We are grateful for the dedication and trust our investors have in Lunar and we will continue to invest in new ways to give more power to consumers and businesses. The new funding will enable…

Revolut, a global financial super-app with more than 18 million customers worldwide, has operationalized its Lithuania based European specialised banking licence in 10 European markets. Customers in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden who upgrade to Revolut Bank for additional services will now have their deposits protected under the deposit guarantee scheme. Deposit protection up to EUR 100,000 is guaranteed by the Lithuanian State company Deposit and Investment Insurance. Customers in the aforementioned countries are now able to upgrade to Revolut Bank from within the app. The upgrade process will only take customers a mere few…