Nordigen announced Riga Startup of the Year 2022

Open banking data analytics company Nordigen Solutions won the Riga Startup of the Year award at the Rīgas dālderis (Riga Thaler) event honouring Riga’s best entrepreneurs.

Together with the Mayor of Riga, Mārtiņš Staķis, the Rīgas dālderis awards were presented to the best entrepreneurs of Riga in five categories:

• Riga Startup of the Year – Nordigen Solutions
• Riga Entrepreneur of the Year in the International Business Centre Sector – MSC Shared Service Center Riga
• Riga Newcomer of the Year – Crowded Hero Latvija
• Riga Employer of the Year – Latvijas Finieris
• Riga’s Most Sustainable Building of the Year – Capitalica Asset Management.

“I hope that we will soon see more and more success stories in Riga. It’s just a matter of time, because the people are there, and they can do it. You have to be proud of your achievements, continue to invest in new innovative ideas, keep taking risks, and carry on working. As long as we keep doing that, we are heading in the right direction,” says Rolands Mesters, co-founder and CEO of Nordigen.

The aim of the event was to highlight the achievements of successful companies in the capital and those entrepreneurs who have excelled in their sector and contributed to the development of entrepreneurship, the high value-added economy, and international competitiveness. The Rīgas dālderis awards event is organised by the Riga Investment and Tourism Agency in cooperation with the Employers’ Confederation of Latvia, the International Business Services Association of Latvia, the Latvian Startup Association Startin.LV, the Investment and Development Agency of Latvia, and the Alliance of Real Estate Developers.

Last year, the Riga Startup of the Year award went to Printify, a local print-on-demand startup, wrote Labs of Latvia.

GoCardless acquired Nordigen this summer

In the summer of this year, the British unicorn GoCardless acquired Nordigen, wrote Labs of Latvia. GoCardless, a direct banking payments company, raised 312 million dollars in a Series G round this year and was valued at 2.1 billion dollars in February. With Nordigen, it hopes to move closer to its vision of becoming a global bank payments network. As far as is known, the amount of the deal has not been disclosed.

Mesters says that the company has experienced the full life cycle of a startup: attracting the first investment, then the next, and now the sale. In that time, the team has grown from two people, Mesters and the other co-founder, Roberts Bernāns, to 90.

By the time GoCardless acquired Nordigen, the startup had raised 3.5 million euros. The company’s latest investment is the 2.1 million euros raised last summer from Black Pearls VC, Inventure, Highgoal Capital, ID4 Ventures, Superangel, Calchas Holding. Angel investors, including Printify co-founder Artis Kehris, also participated in the investment round, Labs of Latvia wrote.

Breaking industry tradition

Nordigen, founded in 2016, provides account information services to financial institutions and technology companies in 31 European countries. The startup’s free and fee-based solutions are used by European banks, lenders, and technology startups. Nordigen’s bank account information service has integration with more than 2,300 European banks.

“We have built Europe’s largest bank integration network. By working with these banks we can reach tens of millions of people’s accounts,” said Mesters.

The company helps move data from one bank’s infrastructure to another financial institution’s environment. Nordigen’s business model is to give access to these bank connections free of charge and to offer a variety of paid services that make programmers’ lives easier.

Nordigen’s first, and for a long time the only, service was a tool for analysing bank statements. It is used by various financial institutions to make faster decisions on granting a loan to a customer. In December 2020, the startup started offering an account information service, Labs of Latvia wrote. That is, Nordigen helps any company in Europe that needs to obtain user account information for a service.

Many companies provide similar services, for example Yodlee was the first to do so back in 1999. Currently, the largest company in this field in Europe is Tink from Sweden. However, none had previously offered such services free of charge. Nordigen found a way to offer it for free. Namely, the Second Payment Services Directive allows access to banks’ public application interfaces.

Source: Anda Asere (labsoflatvia.com). Publicity photo: Rolands Mesters, co-founder and CEO of Nordigen