Yahoo Finance Swedish startup lands €56m from big banks to take advantage of 'open banking'
A Swedish fintech business has raised €56m (£49m) to take advantage of new banking rules across Europe that force banks to share data and collaborate closely with other companies.
Tink has raised the “Series C” funding (third round of institutional funding) from Insight Venture Partners, Sunstone Capital, Nordic banks SEB and Nordea (NDA-SE.ST), and Dutch bank ABN AMRO (ABN.AS). Tink is valued at €240m (£211m) in the round, according to a source close to the deal.
Tink provides technology that allows companies to access banking data on behalf of customers, as well as execute transactions on their behalf. It works with BNP Paribas, ABN AMRO, Nordea, and Swedish payments unicorn Klarna.
“Our customers use this data for various purposes,” Fredrik Hedberg, Tink’s co-founder and CTO, told Yahoo Finance UK. “Everything from helping the customer understand her financial situation better by presenting a holistic view, to using that information to say, hey we see you have this expensive mortgage, we can give you a better one.”
READ MORE: Goldman Sachs and HSBC invest $20m in startup trying to make banks more like Apple
The technology is made possible by so-called open banking legislation that came into force across the UK and Europe last year. The new rules mean banks must share data and account access with third parties if the account holder agrees to it.
“We like to think ourselves as the rails and the brains of open banking,” Hedberg said. “What we’re really trying to build is the platform as a service for financial services.”
The investment comes in the same week that another open banking platform, Bud, raised $20m (£15m) from a consortium of investors that included Goldman Sachs and HSBC.
“People are starting to realise that this industry is going to change,” Hedberg said. “For us it has been evident since we started Tink in 2012, so for us it’s not something new. There is an enormous potential here to capture some of the value.”
Tink currently operates across Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Norway. On Thursday it also announced it is launching across the UK, Austria, Germany, Belgium and Spain.
“The UK is obviously a particularly exciting market,” Hedberg said. “There’s obviously been a lot of buzz over the last two years about UK open banking.”
Tink plans to spend the money on expansion, with ambitions to grow the headcount from 150 people to 300 by the end of the year.
————
Oscar Williams-Grut covers banking, fintech, and finance for Yahoo Finance UK. Follow him on Twitter at @OscarWGrut.
Read more:
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey took part in a bitcoin game called ‘Pass the Torch’
Memo: UBS shakes up tech division to keep pace with data, AI, and the cloud
UK startups suffer ‘worrying’ drop in funding
A hedge fund billionaire has given Cambridge £100m — one of the biggest UK university donations ever
British retail is in turmoil — but the City still loves JD Sports
