GoCardless, one of the leading international firms in direct bank payments, recently announced its plan to acquire Nordigen, a freemium open banking data provider. Through the acquisition, which is expected to close later in the summer, GoCardless aims to become a prominent international bank payment network.
The acquisition will allow the company to provide free open banking connectivity at scale. Since the start of 2021, GoCardless has taken several initiatives to accelerate its open banking strategy. According to the company, the acquisition is an important step toward its open banking mission.
“The Nordigen acquisition will take us to the next level. By intelligently combining free, state-of-the-art open banking connectivity with deep payment expertise, we can now offer open banking-as-a-service to any developer, partner or fintech. We believe this open access will lead to experimentation, and that will create even more compelling use cases. We're excited to redefine what open banking can do with the talented Nordigen team now on board,” Hiroki Takeuchi, the Co-Founder and CEO of GoCardless, commented.
Financial details and other terms of the acquisition were not disclosed by the companies.
Open Banking
The concept of open banking has gained significant popularity across Europe in the past few years. Startups working in the open banking ecosystem has raised substantial funds since the start of 2020. The free API of Nordigen connects to more than 2,300 banks across the European region.
Rolands Mesters, the CEO Of Nordigen, commented: "At Nordigen, our mission is to help businesses around the world adopt and utilize open banking, enabling greater financial transparency and financial inclusion. We share GoCardless's excitement about the growth of open banking, and we're delighted to join forces with a group of people who not only share our passion for driving game-changing innovation in financial services but will also help us bring free open banking access to a far wider audience.”
