Finqware receives EUR 180,000 seed investment from Gapminder VC

Aurel Dragan 22/07/2019 | 11:49

Finqware, a Romanian start-up fintech that is preparing to launch on the European bank aggregation market, receives a seed investment of EUR 180,000 from Gapminder VC. It is the company’s first round of external financing after being set up in 2018 and planning to become the market leader for Open Banking in Europe in the coming years.

The amount attracted by the startup founded by Cosmin Cosma, Dumitru Taraianu and Danut Covalciuc will be used to further develop the solution and infrastructure. The company’s objective is that in the autumn of this year, when the Revised Payments Directive (PSD2) issued by the European Commission enters into force and obliges banks to open their systems, Finqware customers will be the first wave of adoption of Open Banking.

Under the term “Open Banking at work”, Finqware develops a bank aggregation infrastructure linking banks and financial providers with companies wishing to develop innovative digital products and solutions in the financial industry.

“It can be said that we are an innovation platform. All financial applications, such as mobile banking or digital wallets, will begin to help the user simplify their financial lives by managing their bank accounts and other financial products in one place. We provide these applications with the connection infrastructure to the banks so that the technological complexity of simultaneously interconnecting hundreds of data sources is not a hindrance to innovation,” says Cosmin Cosma, co-founder and CEO of Finqware.

In parallel with the development of API (Application Programming Interface), the company also builds its regional coverage, already having various collaborations with banks and fintech companies in Romania, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia.

“We are at the stage where we begin to test Open Banking functionalities with partner banks and finches. Opportunities are enormous, only one has to start implementing them, learn about them by experimenting with various pilot projects. Otherwise, we remain on the theories about the benefits of financial innovation. We hope that things will unfreeze soon to us so that we can show, through the countries where we go, concrete examples implemented with banks and companies in Romania,” says Cosma.

Finqware has recently received recognition from the European Commission (“Seal of Excellence”) for the innovation potential of the solution it is developing. In fact, just 18 months after launch, Finqware has won numerous awards in innovative start-up events both in Romania and abroad. Among these is the big prize at Warsaw’s “PSD2 CEE Regional Challenge” in October 2018, when the Romanian fintech was recognized as the most innovative Open Banking solution in the CEE region.

“We have been watching for some time this highly global offer of banking data aggregation. Finqware is a Romanian company we have been focusing on for over a year, almost immediately after it was created, and with its agility that has developed in such a short time it has convinced us that it can be a strong player on this market in training. Funding from GapMinder corresponds to our objective of supporting the region’s innovative companies and capital to help them grow globally,” said Sergiu Rosca, Founder Partner GapMinder Venture Partners.

GapMinder Venture Partners is an investment fund designed to provide capital to start-up but growing companies and to the development of technology-intensive SMEs both locally and internationally. The investment fund focuses on technology and services, product-oriented objectives and team. GapMinder invests in companies in the first investment phase (series A), seed and pre-seed (acceleration).

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