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Estonian fintech trendsetters 

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Estonian financial solutions are known for being highly innovative, user-friendly, and reliable. That’s because Estonia as a whole and its financial technology sector, in particular, have had close to thirty years to build a high-level financial system from scratch. Today, Estonia’s ever-evolving fintech sector is poised to help set the trend for Europe and beyond.

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Guardtime´s breakthrough digital cash, payment & settlement platform

Guardtime has developed KSI Cash – a breakthrough digital cash, payment, and settlement platform designed to meet critical financial infrastructures’ scalability, reliability, and security requirements.

The design of KSI Cash is the result of new theoretical and applied research into money and payment systems and trustless applications.

Luukas Ilves, the Head of Strategy at Guardtime
 Luukas Ilves, the Head of Strategy at Guardtime. 

KSI Cash is based on the cryptographic components and architecture of KSI Blockchain. This secure and highly scalable distributed infrastructure has been in production use as a critical service with >99,999% uptime since 2012.

KSI Blockchain has received various government certifications for use in sensitive and highly regulated contexts.

Who is it for

  • Fintech
  • Central Banks
  • Commercial banks
  • Governments

International projects

Eesti Pank (the Estonian Central Bank) launched a multi-year project collaborating with technology companies Guardtime and The SW7 Group to research how technologically suitable the Estonian e-government core technology is for operating a central bank digital currency.

Bankish – one seamless environment for credit and deposits

Bankish provides a flexible and extensive toolbox of core IT solutions to help financial services providers leap legacy architecture to an intuitive, secure, and user-friendly environment.

Bankish team
 Bankish´s team. 

Bankish brings all aspects of credit and deposits into one seamless environment – applications, scoring, administration, payments, arrears management, contract and communications management with templates, CRM, automated notifications with back-office tasks management, reporting with business intelligence, product line management, and more.

Who is it for?

  • Financial services industry
  • Microfinance institutions
  • Payday lenders, P2P, credit unions
  • Building societies
  • Regional banks in business and/or consumer lending.
  • Non-financial companies who wish to start offering financial services (e.g. BNPL)

Notable projects

  • An FSA licensed credit provider wanted to change their core solution and an important aspect was the need to manage in one environment a very broad range of loan products (consumer credit, mortgage loans, leasing, factoring) but at affordable pricing as total loan portfolio was under 20 mio EUR. Bankish was the most suitable solution for them.
  • A start-up wanted to launch a mortgage backed lending solution for businesses. Bankish was able to launch the solution in 6 weeks.
  • A multi-country payday lender wanted to test a new product in a new market but with their existing IT solution it would have taken min 6 months and a sizable amount of money. With Bankish they could do it in a few months and with a fraction of costs of their own IT development.

Modularbank – next-generation core banking platform

Modularbank is a technology provider that enables incumbent banks, fintechs, and even non-financial companies to rapidly roll out  new financial services and products to their customers.

The flexible platform consists of independent modules, covering all retail and business banking capabilities, such as accounts, lending, payments, deposits, assets & collaterals, financial accounting, and cards.

Thanks to the modularity aspect, businesses can pick and choose the exact functionalities they need, depending on which services they wish to start offering their customers; additional capabilities can always be added later on. The platform is API-first for easy integration and cloud-agnostic, meaning it can be deployed on any cloud system (or on-prem).

Founders of Modularbank
 Modularbank´s founders. 

In an industry that still relies heavily on slow, rigid, and outdated legacy systems, Modularbank´s software represents the future of financial technology. With Modularbank, banks and other businesses can react in real-time to the changing consumer needs of the 21st century and seamlessly bring customer-centric services and products to the market.

Who is it for?

  • Banks and financial institutions
  • Fintech startups
  • Non-financial companies – e.g. retailers, marketplaces and e-commerce companies – that would like to embed financial services into their main offering.

International projects

  • Modularbank’s lending module enabled the largest banking group in Finland to rapidly increase their consumer lending portfolio through API-first approach, flexible product configuration, improved user experience, single source of business logic, and the ability to bring in new business through 3rd parties;
  • A Nordic financial services company, listed in the Frankfurt stock exchange and active in more than 20 countries, had been running on legacy systems that were inflexible and costly to maintain, requiring a lot of customisation, which had resulted in vendor lock-in. Their previous core could  not support desired features, such as mobile wallets and multi-currency current accounts. Within five months, Modularbank implemented the new banking core, migrating over 1 million customer accounts;
  • A German-based B2B marketplace wished to implement electronic payment solutions to satisfy corporate demand and transition to a Single-Creditor-Model. Modularbank’s core banking solution with digital wallets and payment processing engine integrated with the client’s bank of choice enables the marketplace to increase revenue and broaden their customer base thanks to providing additional services.

EveryPay – resource-saving digital payment development

EveryPay helps banks and acquirers save time, resources, and costs on digital payment product development. The company offers the same features as leading third-party payment solution providers and helps secure more merchants, increase revenues, and manage to acquire risks effectively.

EveryPay payment methods visual
 EveryPay supports debit and credit card payments, Open Banking, API-based payments, and alternative payment methods like ApplePay, GooglePay, and PayPal. 

Who is it for?

  • Banks with card acquiring licenses
  • Financial institutions.

Notable projects

  • An important milestone has been an agreement with one of the largest banks in the Nordic countries, SEB bank, from which the company was able to expand its service throughout the Baltics.
  • Today EveryPay is the primary partner to SEB Bank, Swedbank, and LHV Bank, providing them with digital payment processes and developments and helping continuously improve digital payment solutions in the Baltics. Additionally, EveryPay is empowering LHV Bank to enter the UK market with an up-to-date digital payment solution.
  • The most recent success – the domestication of payment initiation service options based on Open Banking APIs. EveryPay successfully adapted its platform to this already a year ago.
  • Payment link LinkPay. This is a very convenient solution for the merchant, allowing one to accept online payments with just one simple link, even without a working website. It can also be sent to the customer in almost any possible way: text message, e-mail, QR code, etc.

Salv helps companies get ahead of today´s financial criminals

Salv AML platform gives companies the flexibility and speed they need to get ahead of today’s financial criminals and prevent financial crime much more efficiently.

Scaling your fintech while keeping your company and customers safe from financial criminals can be an immense challenge. Salv AML platform offers customer screening, monitoring, and risk assessment all in one place – taking care of compliance so that fintechs can scale with confidence.

Startup founder Taavi Tamkivi on a rooftop
 Salv´s co-founder Taavi Tamkivi. 

For more established financial institutions, the Salv AML Bridge platform offers a revolutionary collaboration solution, giving companies access to third-party AML intelligence and enabling them to communicate with other banks in their network to help cut out criminals abusing the financial system.

 Who is it for?

  • Fast scaling fintech startups
  • Established fintechs and neobanks
  • Banks and financial institutions

Notable projects

  • Salv, together with the Estonian finance sector, has built a solution that will revolutionise the battle against financial crime globally. Estonian-initiated AML Bridge is setting a great example of how financial institutions and governments on a national, regional, and global level can help fight financial crime by making crime-related secure intelligence sharing possible.
  • In October 2020, four of Estonia’s leading banks – Swedbank, SEB, Luminor, and LHV – signed on to a country-wide pilot of Bridge. This pilot has been conducted with the support of the Estonian Ministry of Finance and under the supervision of the Estonian Financial Supervisory Authority and the Estonian Data Protectorate Inspectorate. A more thorough dive into the  case study is available here.
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Contact

Visit us physically or virtually

We host impactful events both in our centre and online for government institutions, companies, and media. You’ll get an overview of e-Estonia’s best practices and build links to leading IT-service providers and state experts to support your digitalisation plans.

Questions? Have a chat with us.

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Call us: +372 6273157 (Monday to Friday, 9:00-16:30 Estonian time)
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Find us

The Briefing Centre is conveniently located just a 2-minute drive from the airport and around 10- to 15-minute drive from the city centre.

You will find us on the ground floor of Valukoja 8, at the central entrance behind the statue of Mr Ernst Julius Öpik. We will meet the delegation at the building’s reception. Kindly note that a booking is required to visit us.

Valukoja 8
11415 Tallinn, Estonia