Open Payments Raises $3.5M In Seed Round

Open Payments, the Stockholm-based FinTech, has raised €3 million ($3.5 million) in a seed-funding round, according to a report from the magazine EU-Startups. The round is led by Industrifonden, with participation from existing investors including Brightly Ventures and Luminar Ventures.

The funds, according to the report, will be used to “to continue to grow the team and establish the platform in the Nordic and European market.”

Since its founding in 2017, Open Payments has worked to provide PSD2-compliant API aggregation, allowing for easy, quick integrations with financial institutions.

The idea is for businesses to have the power to develop their own products and brands under their own names and allow third-party partners and businesses to improve the platform even more in the future, according to the report. The concept is somewhere in-between a regular FinTech and the Big Tech business model, with the openness and modularity of the latter distinguishing it from typical FinTechs.

Open Payments Founder and CEO Jonas Kjellin said he believes that Big Tech firms “will have a big impact on how we perform financial services in the future, but also requires traditional FinTechs, and by bridging the gap between them, we have a great position to offer our customers a flexible solution,” per the report.

Anna Ljungdahl, investment manager at Industrifonden, said that Open Payments “makes it easy for companies to take advantage of the enormous business development potential that open banking entails for small and large companies,” and would offer more flexibility and freedom for payments.

Open Payments has launched services in Sweden and Finland, and plans to expand to more markets soon.

Jason Conibear, CEO of FXPress, recently spoke with PYMNTS and said that a more holistic approach, including the addition of banking services and integration with payments programs, would be necessary as businesses recover from the coronavirus pandemic.

However, there is a lag in open banking implementation due to the differences between various countries. Factors as widespread as differing deadlines, concerns over online security and infrastructure cost, and disparity in resources have all contributed to making the process slower than it could be.