Swedish fintech Open Payments has closed a €3 million growth round led by Industrifonden with support from Japan's Sony Financial Ventures and Global Brain and existing investors.
Founded in 2017 by former iZetttle from PayPal veteran Louise Brandt, the company's account aggregation platform connects to commercial banks via an API to enable services such as payments, account reconciliation and cash management for embedding directly in client applications like ERP systems, payment providers and fintechs.
“We see an increasing demand from leading accounting and ERP systems and other financial systems that want to utilise open banking in their products in a secure and reliable way,” says Brandt. “Above all, they want to be able to provide various payments for their business customers, such as supplier payments and salary payouts. We see that B2B payments are part of the open banking space where we have a first mover advantage and can take the lead internationally.”
The firm's customer base consists of accounting and ERP systems providers and tech companies, who have integrated Open Payment's platform in order to provide their own open banking solutions.
Sweden's venture capital fund Industrifonden led the last funding round in Open Payments back in 2020. The participation by Sony Ventures and Global Brain is their first in a Swedish fintech.
“In Japan, open banking is in the early stages and we are inspired by how far Open Banking has come in Europe and the Nordics,” says Junji Nakamura, director of Sony Financial Ventures. “We are impressed by Open Payment's technology and how the company has enabled open banking for businesses. We made a strategic decision to invest in Open Payments to allow more markets to embrace the benefits of open banking faster.”