At Yapily, we are proud to be playing our part in delivering more efficient, more secure, and more flexible financial infrastructure to clients all over the world, and we are thrilled to announce that we have now arrived in the Nordic region.

Opportunity lies north

First up, let’s define our terms: the Nordic region, as we see it, covers Norway, Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Iceland. There may be only 27 million people, but if these countries were bundled together, they would make up the 10th largest economy in the world.

It’s a diverse and exciting space, with the five countries united by – among other things – their strong fintech sectors, dynamic innovation cultures, and vibrant start-up ecosystems.

In the first six months of 2021 alone, the region attracted an incredible $1.99 billion USD in start-up funding across 64 deals, and it plays host to no fewer than three of the 15 biggest start-up hubs in Europe – not bad when many of the region’s capital cities are dwarfed by those of larger countries.

Some key recent funding announcements include:

• Danish regtech firm Templafy, which raised $60 million
• Finnish blockchain and crypto lending company Tesseract, $25 million
• Swedish payments and remittances provider Yabie, $24 million
• Danish data and analytics firm Forecast, $19 million.

From DeFi to the big data economy, by any measure this is a broad range of compelling companies.

Even more striking is the rapid growth in the space – as recently as 2018, total fintech investment ran to $399 million USD, meaning it has more than quadrupled in only three years.

From strong IT-focused education systems to benign macroeconomic fundamentals to populations that already favoured e-commerce more than the EU average even before the pandemic, all the places are on the board for the Nordics to challenge for the title of the world’s most exciting region for fintech.

And that’s where we come in.

Reach across the region

Yapily currently works with the following institutions across Norway, Denmark, Finland and Sweden. For full coverage, please refer to our API coverage tracker.

• Nordea (9.3 million customers)
• Swedbank (7.3 million customers)
• Handelsbanken (6.8 million customers)
• Danske (5.1 million customers)
• API provider BEC (2 million customers)

We’re working with established banks, challenger fintechs, and a wide variety of other players in the Nordic fintech ecosystem to both promote connectivity within their home markets and help businesses from across Europe gain access to this dynamic space. We are actively leveraging the extensive network we have built across the continent and the experience we have gained along the way to become the partner of choice for fintechs across the region.

With companies like iZettle expanding into the US and Holvi planning an IPO, it couldn’t be a better time for us to be arriving in the Nordic region, and we look forward to helping reinforce the region’s success as its strong bench of insurgent firms gets ready to take the world on.

Where next?

As we move into Q4 and start thinking about 2022, we’re not content to rest on our laurels.

Next up, we’re planning on continuing our expansion, with the Baltics next on our itinerary – watch this space!