News

The number of electronic money institutions (EMIs) operating in Lithuania rose to 40 in 2018, up from 12 just two years earlier, and the sector’s revenues from electronic money issuance and payment services surged to 6.4 million euros, according to Bank of Lithuania statistics. Changing market situation prompted UAB “Kredito uniju namai”, which is a part of Forbis Group, with 64 percent of EMIs as company clients, to change its trading name to Fininbox. 

From “Kredito uniju namai” it will become Fininbox

“The old name was good while our clients were mainly credit unions. But the market has broadened to FinTechs startups, electronic money institutions, and so on. So rebranding is logical,” said Tadeuš Šturo, the CEO of the subsidiary.

Rapid growth is thanks in part to favourable conditions created by the central bank as the local financial regulator. According to Fininbox’ representative, today 64 percent of the company’s clients are electronic money institutions (EMIs), while 29% are credit unions and 7% are currency exchange operators. They are spread all over the world – in Europe, Asia, and both North and South America, Mr Šturo said.

And EMIs are just one part of the market for Fininbox, which offers full IT solutions for banks, credit unions, payment providers, currency exchange operators and a big variety of FinTech operations from many countries.

“We have clients licenced by the Bank of Lithuania and clients licenced by other countries’ regulators – Malta’s, the UK’s, Ireland’s, and so on. We’re open to everyone, and technically we’re able to serve clients from all over the world,” Mr Šturo noted. He says, that working in close tandem with the Bank of Lithuania, which is part of the Eurosystem, enables it to react quickly to any changes in the market and the rules of the game.

“It’s about meeting the challenges of today’s financial industry in a reliable and cost-effective way,” the company’s CEO stressed. “In a world of rapid change, the approach of renting rather than re-inventing IT can really pay off for institutions of any size, letting them focus entirely on creating value for customers and eliminating many costs and headaches,” he said.

With its new name, Fininbox also plans to expand its range of services. It expects to be the first in Lithuania, for example, to provide automated SEPA Instant credit transfers and SEPA Direct Debit, and among the first with solutions for implementing the EU’s Revised Directive on Payment Services (PSD2). It will also offer anti-money laundering (AML) training and financial accounting for FinTech firms. And Fininbox now powers the Contomobile app for sending, receiving and managing funds with personal and business IBAN accounts – Forbis Group’s own first foray into providing financial services.

Hence the new service offerings. They are in addition to the group’s deep expertise in all kinds of IT integrations, and to the “shared development” model it offers so that multiple clients can split the costs of creating new features they all need or want.

Additional information:

The unit, whose original name meant “House of Credit Unions”, was established to make the Lithuania-based Forbis Group’s powerful FORPOST system, which is used by major international banks, available also to smaller financial institutions on a flexible banking system-as-a-service (SaaS) basis.

Company calls it a ‘banking system-in-a-box’, since it includes everything: software, infrastructure, support and development. It’s a world-class backend, secure and compliant, that costs less, has more features and scales more easily than any system that a smaller firm could build and maintain in-house.

While implementing advanced secure IT solutions for big banks over the last three decades, Forbis itself gradually became an expert in modern financial products, including compliance with AML and other regulations. Now the company says SaaS clients are increasingly seeking its industry advice.