Payment company GoCardless said that it intends to acquire Nordigen, a Latvia-based open banking data provider, for an undisclosed price.
GoCardless plans to incorporate Nordigen’s open banking connectivity into its account-to-account network. The latter’s open banking connectivity is said to connect to over 2,300 banks in 31 countries in Europe.
Nordigen offers free access to open banking data as well as data insights to fintech companies and developers.
Nordigen CEO Rolands Mesters said: “At Nordigen, our mission is to help businesses around the world adopt and utilise 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.”
GoCardless said that the acquisition will allow it to offer free open banking connectivity at scale, thereby giving everyone self-serve access to account information services (AIS).
Additionally, Nordigen’s suite of premium data products is said to help enhance outcomes across a variety of use cases from credit assessments to customer engagement.
GoCardless said that the acquisition is part of its efforts to expedite its open banking strategy. Over the last 18 months, the company rolled out its open banking-enabled feature called Instant Bank Pay across various markets.
It also introduced Verified Mandates, which combines direct debit with AIS to prevent fraud.
The addition of Nordigen is expected to help GoCardless acquire in-house open banking connectivity, which it intends to build on in the near future by increasing coverage and adding new payment types like variable recurring payments.
GoCardless co-founder and CEO Hiroki Takeuchi said: “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.”
The acquisition is anticipated to close later in the summer.
