Nordic Fintech Snippets – October 2020
With the drop in temperatures and the beginning of the flu season, in several Nordic countries, this has meant large-scale and sudden measures to fight off COVID-19, including travel restrictions, recommendations on personal distance, and a ban on gatherings of people. This has effectively kept the amount of physical events low, creating less opportunities for networking and meetups with investors.
However, despite that, October had some worth-celebrating fundraising rounds in the Nordics, with Wolt raising 7.5M€, Norwegian Quantfolio raising NOK12M, and Denmark’s Lunar securing 40M€ in order to enter the buy now, pay later space.
Going beyond fintech and funding rounds, a new e-commerce era has begun in the Nordics, with Amazon finally opening its Swedish site, amazon.se. The local brick-and-mortar shops along with smaller e-commerce sites have for years been warned about how this will impact the market and we are curious to keep an eye on any data revealing how the launch goes. With COVID-19 already encouraging people to shop more online, the future is clearly online.
This is Nordic Fintech Snippets, the combined effort of all the Nordic Fintech Hubs, sharing the most important and latest news in fintech and digital finance from each country.
Nordic highlights
Lunar, the Nordic challenger bank that started out life as a personal finance manager app (PFM) but acquired a full banking license in 2019, has raised €40 million in Series C funding from existing investors, plans to enter the ‘buy now, pay later’ space.
Biometric fintech Zwipe and the leading software and digital banking services provider in the Nordics TietoEVRY, have agreed to jointly roll-out biometric payment solutions for banks in the Nordic and Baltic regions.
Quantfolio as, best known for delivering autonomous advisor technology to some of Scandinavia’s most innovative banks, is raising more than NOK 15 million in fresh capital for international growth.
Deep dive: Nordic fintech publications
In the past months, the Fintech Guides from Denmark, Finland and Sweden were published. Have a look at the yearly industry handbooks to truly understand, what is going on in the biggest fintech hubs in the north.
Country specific news
Finland
TietoEVRY and Zwipe to deliver biometric payments to banks in the Nordic and Baltic regions
Fintech Farm is looking for the most revolutionary fintech of the year
Lukasz Gadowski has invested €7.5 million in Wolt
Valega Chain raises 300k€ seed round
Denmark
Challenger bank Lunar raises €40M
Nets Group acquires Swiss terminal supplier CCV Schweiz
Penneo A/S acquires KYC software business activities from CLA Reply ApS
Iceland
Grid raises $12M Series A to turn spreadsheets into visual ‘narratives’
Monerium Discusses The “Simple“ Route To A Digital Euro In Europe
Sweden
P27 acquires Bankgirot, the Swedish mass payment clearing house behind Swish
Lydia and Tink partner for open banking
Klarna under investigation for unsolicited emails in the UK
Klarna acquires Swedish post-purchase experience startup Woilà
Norway
Vipps launches its own mobile subscription
Quantfolio raises NOK15 million in VC investment round
Future events
World’s largest fintech event, Singapore Fintech Festival is held this year globally and online on December 7-11th. The Nordic Fintech Hubs will join the show by hosting local satellite events. Save the dates! We will send you detailed information within the next month.
5.11.2020 Findec Panel Discussion
11.11.2020 Fintech Stories with TicketCo and Quantfol.io:
24.11.2020 Elevating New Nordic Fintech Innovation in Japan
17.3.2021 Nordic Fintech Summit
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