Ageras Group, a group of companies backed by Investcorp Technology Partners (ITP) that offers a range of software solutions to small businesses, announced that it has acquired Zervant, a Finland-based online invoicing software. The group is known for their online marketplace Ageras.com, helping business owners save time and money by comparing quotes from qualified accountants, Meanwhile, Zervant was founded in 2010, and after rapid expansion across Europe, has grown to more than 700,000 registered users who use the software to run their business by issuing invoices, tracking payments and getting paid faster in an intuitive interface. Ageras Group has recently…

Ingka Investments, the investment arm of Ingka Group which owns and operates IKEA stores, has invested US$22.5 million in US-based Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) firm Jifiti, for a minority stake in the company. Ingka Group and Jifiti have a long-standing commercial partnership with the latter acting as a facilitator of IKEA Retail’s and consumer financing services. IKEA, with their local banking partners in Spain, France, Portugal and Belgium have already been offering financing in their stores via the Jifiti platform since 2019 and are now rolling out into other countries. The aim is to have the Jifiti platform facilitate…

Stockholm-based fintech company Invoier, who has built and established a marketplace for fair and transparent trading of invoices, has secured a EUR 4.1 million equity funding from the European Innovation Council’s (EIC) Fund. Invoier’s marketplace enables SMEs to convert invoices into working capital. The marketplace is built on a unique AI-based risk assessment method, making it possible for professional investors to enter a new asset class and bid in real time. The aim is to change the behaviour and challenge the EUR 3,000 billion factoring market by creating a fair and transparent marketplace through technological innovation. The EIC Fund investment…

Newly-established Danish small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) bank kompasbank announced their go-live on Mambu’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) banking platform. On Mambu’s cloud-native banking platform, kompasbank said that it was able to build fast and flexible customer onboarding, loan and deposit processes. The challenger bank claimed to be “the first cloud-only bank in Denmark and embraces a fully digital architecture to differentiate its service and products”. kompasbank had secured its banking license from Denmark’s Financial Supervisory Authority in March earlier this year to serve the SME segment. Carsten Smith, COO of kompasbank said, “We think Mambu is the right choice to help…

Voyager Digital, a publicly-traded cryptocurrency platform in the United States, announced the acquisition of Denmark-based cryptocurrency payment platform Coinify. According to CoinDesk, the deal valued at about US$84 million in stock and cash. Under the terms of the share purchase agreement, the consideration to Coinify shareholders will consist of 5,100,000 of newly issued shares of Voyager Digital Ltd. common stock and US$15 million in cash. As part of the agreement, the company will retain US$5.5 million of cash on the Coinify balance sheet. Voyager will retain substantially all current Coinify employees, entering into employment agreements with key members of the…

In Europe, the Nordic countries of Sweden, Denmark and Norway have the most advanced open banking ecosystems. Trailblazing regional regulatory regimes, highly developed digital infrastructures, and a pan-Nordic collaborative approach have enabled these countries to take the lead over the rest of Europe, a new research by Mastercard found. The report, titled Open Banking Readiness Index: The Future of Open Banking in Europe, explores the status of open banking in ten selected European markets, and found that across Europe, Sweden, Denmark and Norway are at the forefront of the open banking movement. To date, they are the only countries in…

Nordic challenger bank Lunar announced a EUR 210 million series D funding round led by family-owned investment company HEARTLAND. Other investors included Kinnevik, one of Europe’s leading growth investors, and Tencent, a leading China-based technology company. Alongside the lead investors, IDC Ventures, Fuel Ventures, MW&L Capital Partners and Peter Mühlmann, the Founder and CEO of Trustpilot, also invested. They will join current investors such as SEED Capital, Chr. Augustinus Fabrikker, Socii Capital and Greyhound Capital. The new investment was secured following a rapid acceleration in growth from both private and business customers. Lunar now serves more than 325,000 customers across…

Danish fintech Pleo announced that it has raised US$150 million in a Series C funding round to become a unicorn with a company valuation of US$1.7 billion. The Series C round was co-led by Bain Capital Ventures and Thrive Capital, with contributions from existing investors Creandum, Kinnevik, Founders, Stripes and Seedcamp. Keri Gohman, a partner at Bain Capital Ventures will be joining Pleo’s board of directors. Pleo offers smart company cards that enable employees to buy the things they need for work, while keeping a company’s finance director in control of spending. With the new funds, Pleo will be ramping…

Rapyd, a global fintech-as-a-service company, has entered into a definitive agreement with Arion Banki to acquire Valitor, an Icelandic payments solutions company, for US$100 million. The acquisition of Valitor will complement Rapyd’s existing payment capabilities throughout Europe, as well as enhance its issuing portfolio. Valitor provides both in-store and online payments acceptance solutions as well as card issuing to SMB merchants in Iceland, the U.K. and Ireland, and across Europe. Following Rapyd’s recent US$300 million financing round, the company is actively pursuing acquisition opportunities, targeting strong payments companies and enhancing their capabilities by connecting them to the Rapyd Global Payments…

Danish personal financial management (PFM) app Spiir announced that it has launched a beta version of its app in the Baltics ahead of their recent expansion into Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The team behind the app has made a special beta flow within the app to improve the user experience and gather feedback for future adjustments. Spiir said that it already has more than 400,000 users across the Nordics. With the help of open banking, the Spiir app can connect to users’ bank accounts and deliver a complete financial overview, even if they have different accounts in different banks. The…

Visa announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Tink, a Swedish open banking platform, for 1.8 billion Euros (US$2.2 billion). Tink will retain its brand and current management team, and its headquarters will remain in Stockholm, Sweden. The combination of Visa’s proven infrastructure and sustained investment in resilience, cybersecurity and fraud prevention with Tink’s APIs, technology and customer relationships is expected to help accelerate the adoption of open banking in Europe by ensuring a secure, reliable platform for innovation. As a result, consumers can better control their financial experiences, including managing their money, financial data and financial goals.…

Icelandic digital banking and finance solutions developer Meniga has signed a new partnership agreement with Nordea, a financial services groups in the Nordics, to continue the integration of its cashback rewards platform within the latter’s mobile banking app in Sweden. According to the agreement, Nordea will continue to offer personalised cashback rewards, which are tailored to individual spending profiles, to its customers in Sweden. Through the multi-bank platform, banks can seamlessly integrate, via Meniga’s cloud-based API, cashback rewards directly into their mobile banking applications, and provide their customers with various personalised, cashback rewards and discounts from retail brands. The platform…

Dreams, a Swedish provider of behavioural and engagement banking solutions, announced the launch of its financial wellbeing platform in partnership with Ukrainian commercial bank UKRSIBBANK BNP Paribas Group. The company’s financial wellbeing platform is now embedded into UKRSIBBANK’s mobile banking app, giving its 2 million customers across Ukraine access to a full range of additional functionalities from which they can set and achieve money-saving goals through clever, automated saving features, in addition to nudges and hacks. The integration will help UKRSIBBANK to revamp its digital banking offering with a more personalised and engaging user experience, which will drive customer satisfaction…

The central bank of Sweden Riksbank pilots phase two of its e-krona project with Swedish bank Handelsbanken and TietoEVRY, a Finnish IT software and service company providing IT and product engineering services. The pilot project run by the Riksbank aims to assess the possibilities of introducing a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). The e-krona pilot is therefore moving on from only having simulated participants to cooperation with external participants in the test environment. In this second phase, one aspect the Riksbank hopes to investigate is how well the e-krona’s technical platform works when integrated with the internal systems of a…

Sweden’s open banking platform Tink continues its expansion across Europe with the acquisition of FinTecSystems, a German open banking infrastructure fintech, powering over 150 banks and fintechs in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The acquisition of FinTecSystems is conditional upon approval from the national competent authorities. Tink said in a statement that this acquisition builds on the €175 million investment that it had secured through two funding rounds in 2020, and complements its organic growth strategy to enhance its platform, increase connectivity and expand its product offering across Europe. Following the acquisition, FinTecSystems will continue to serve new and existing customers…

Home to one of the largest and best-known tech ecosystems in Europe, Sweden is now emerging as a fintech powerhouse, counting nearly 400 companies that use technology and digital platforms to support, enable or innovate banking and financial services, according to data from Invest Stockholm, the official investment promotion agency of the city. Some of these companies are now world leaders in their own industry, while others are rapidly expanding overseas. To get a sense of the Sweden’s most innovative and successful fintech companies, we look today at seven fast-growing Swedish fintech companies and their recent developments. For this list,…

Financial Software and Systems (FSS), a global provider of integrated payment products and a payment processor, is partnering with Zwipe, a Norway-based paymets fintech, to bring biometrics payment cards to issuers globally. Both entities will collaborate closely, offering greater value to customers by combining FSS’s Unified Issuance Platform and Zwipe Pay One biometric card capabilities, supported by Zwipe’s fast-growing global network of card manufacturing partners. As part of this collaboration, FSS will offer Zwipe Pay ONE biometric payment cards globally. The initial focus will be in those markets where contactless is bringing considerable benefits in the area of financial inclusion…

HIPS Payment Group, an Ireland-based provider of e-commerce and mobile payment solutions, and The Payment House, a Nordic payment processor for taxi companies in Scandinavia, announced their partnership to enable payment with crypto currency in over 20,000 taxis in Scandinavia and 10,000 taxis in the UK. The two companies will leverage each other’s technologies so that consumers can easily use crypto payments at real-time transaction speeds, offering a convenient payment method not currently in use. The solution, which is planned to roll out in beta November 2021, will use the Hips Merchant Protocol (HMP) and Hips Merchant Gateway (HMP-gateway) over…

Norges Bank, the central bank of Norway, announced that it will test various technical solutions for a central bank digital currency (CBDC) over the next two years in line with the recommendations of an internal working group. The working group is of the opinion that the motivation for research into CBDCs has been strengthened. Many central banks are in the process of carrying out similar research, and several are already under way with technical testing. At the same time, payment technologies have evolved at a rapid pace, and cash usage has fallen further. The share of cash payments in Norway…

Norway is home to over 120 fintech companies with the vast majority of solutions available right now focusing on mobile payments and online banking, though other segments such as data and analytics, insurtech, data and analytics, and wealthtech, are also represented, data from TheFactor, a fintech and proptech incubator and accelerator, show. Several Norwegian fintechs have grown to notable size, attracting the interest of foreign investors and expanding overseas. To get a sense of Norway’s biggest, most successful fintech companies, we’ve compiled a list of six Norwegian fintechs that have recorded strong growth, made notable strides this past year, and…