The first neobank with Lithuanian capital SME Bank has partnered with the Baltic country’s next-generation payment infrastructure provider kevin to create a “one-stop-shop” for e-commerce business owners.
The combined offering is a unified payment infrastructure enabling account-to-account (A2A) payments across the Baltics, as well as revenue-based financing based on e-retailers’ expenses and profit, simplifying life for SME owners.
The payment collection options on offer include an open banking-based Payment Initiation Service (PIS) enabling instant, cost-effective and end-user-friendly collections from majority of consumer with an account at a bank in the European Economic Area (EEA). Free open banking plugins from major ecommerce providers, including WooCommerce, Prestashop, Opencart, and Magento, make integration simple and extremely fast — all with zero customised IT development.
“SME Bank exists to make life easier for SME owners and we use technology, where it makes sense, to achieve that” said Mantvydas Štareika, CEO at SME Bank.
“By partnering with fintech kevin. and its open banking integrations we are combining many things that SME owners need into a single platform: fast payments, significantly reduced transaction costs and ultra-fast, AI-guided finance decisions. Our partnership will save owners time, help them grow faster, and reduce costs” he added.
SME Bank which is licenced by the European Central Bank started its operations in June 2021. In November 2021, the Lithuanian neobank signed a guarantee agreement with the European Investment Fund (EIF) under the “European Guarantee Fund” (EGF), to channel financing to Lithuanian SMEs. EGF-guarantee supports up to €100 million in new financing to over 500 Lithuanian SMEs dealing with the economic fall-out of the COVID.
Founded in 2018 and headquartered in Vilnius, kevin secured in May $65 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Accel, with participation from Eurazeo and all existing investors, The Series A funding comes just six months after the company secured its $10 million seed round and brings kevin.’s total funding to $77 million. Since the seed round, the team has now grown to more than 170 employees working from 30 countries and is set to almost double by 2023.
