Danske Bank Spiir-ed into first fintech investment
Danske Bank has invested “millions” in Danish-based budget app Spiir, thus becoming co-owner of a fintech company for the first time.
More than 200,000 Danes use Spiir
According to the bank, more than 200,000 Danes use Spiir to manage their budget, monitor their spending and find less expensive alternatives for their fixed expenses.
With the investment, of which exact details were not disclosed, Danske says it now has access to Spiir’s technical platform, which includes data retrieval from other Nordic banks.
Rune Mai, CEO at Spiir, says: “With Danske Bank to back us, we now have the opportunity to accelerate the development of both Spiir and Nordic API Gateway.”
He adds, as an example, that consumers benefit via this data deal – “imagine liquidity management or accounting solutions that automatically perform reconciliations with a bank”.
Danske says the investment in Spiir “supplements” its work to meet the requirements of the new Payment Services Directive II (PSD2), which obligates banks to make customers’ bank data available to third parties.
The bank explains that it is also a step towards opening up more for partnerships and making it “simpler and more efficient for our customers to manage their day-to-day finances”.
Last month, it was reported that Sweden-based start-up Minna Technologies’ personal finance management (PFM) solution for subscription management will be integrated into Danske Bank’s mobile banking app later in 2018.
But Danske says the investment in Spiir “nevertheless stands out”.
Lars Malmberg, head of commercial excellence in group development in Danske Bank, says he sees a potential in Spiir’s work to develop its platform, the Nordic API Gateway.
In practice, this could mean Danke’s customers could view their accounts with other banks, or if they have accounts with several banks, he says they will soon be able to view these accounts in its new Danske Mobile Banking app.
Spiir was founded in 2011 by Mai and Gudmundur Hreidarsson for the “purpose of making personal budgets both fun and easy to understand”. Good luck with that.
The two founders are currently CEO and CTO in the company, respectively, in a business which consists of 15 employees and is backed by a number of private investors, including entrepreneur Lars Kolind.
