Swedish Open Payments Raises €3 Million From Japanese VCs

Open Payments, a Swedish financial technology company, has closed a €3 million growth round led by Industrifonden and backed by Japan’s Sony Financial Ventures, Global Brain, and other investors.

The company was started in 2017 by Louise Brandt, a former employee of iZettle from PayPal. Its account aggregation platform connects to commercial banks through an API to provide services like payments, account reconciliation, and cash management that can be embedded directly into 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.”

Customers of the company include companies that make accounting and ERP systems and tech companies that have integrated Open Payment’s platform to make their own open banking solutions.

Back in 2020, the last round of funding for Open Payments was led by the Swedish venture capital fund Industrifonden. Sony Ventures and Global Brain are taking part in a Swedish fintech for the first time.

“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.”