Nordic Fintech Highlights - January 2026

Nordic Fintech Highlights – January

Welcome to the January edition of Nordic Fintech Highlights, where we share the most relevant industry updates.

We also have a major announcement from our side: Tom Dahlström has been appointed CEO of Fintech Farm. Dahlström brings more than 20 years of experience from the financial sector. He has previously served as Chief Strategy Officer at OP Financial Group and currently sits on the Board of Directors of S-Bank. His focus is to accelerate our international growth and strengthen our go-to-market services. Read the press release here.

January updates

January started on a high note, especially in funding. Even though the total number of news items was not that high, the updates we did see set the tone for what looks like an active year ahead. We will also bring these Highlights to the stage at the Nordic Fintech Summit, where we will recap the key trends and what they mean for the year ahead.

Be sure to catch our monthly Highlight Podcasts with Fintech Daydreaming, where we deep dive into some news stories of the month.
Funding
Funding activity was led again by a Danish unicorn, this time Lunar. The Nordic digital challenger raised €46 million to scale its business banking offering and accelerate expansion across the region. Beyond Lunar, January funding pointed to a familiar theme: capital is flowing to companies that already have licences, customers and infrastructure in place, rather than early-stage experimentation.

Partnerships
Partnership news revolved heavily around payments infrastructure. P2P, A2A and real-time payment flows were everywhere, with banks and fintechs teaming up to improve speed, reach and reliability. Rather than launching new consumer-facing products, most partnerships focused on strengthening the rails underneath payments, a clear sign that infrastructure is where competitive advantage is increasingly built.

Launches
Launches followed the same pattern. Many of the new offerings introduced were tied to payments, P2P transfers and A2A use cases, often aimed at making existing services faster, simpler or easier to integrate. The common thread was not novelty, but execution. Improving core payment experiences and making them work across borders and platforms remains a top priority across the Nordic fintech ecosystem.

Have a look at the news from January below and stay tuned for more!

You can find all the monthly Nordic Fintech updates from the past over here.