NextGen Nordics will bring together multiple stakeholders - the banking community, central banks, public authorities and trade and business beneficiaries - to generate community discussion, explore the benefits and offer practical advice on activating the opportunities of new technologies in the Nordic region. Register for the event here.

Juni launches USD accounts

Swedish company Juni, a neobank aimed at e-commerce entrepreneurs, announced it has left its beta stage and has entered a new stage of growth with the launch of several features.

Part of this launch involves a rebranding, but importantly the inclusion of USD accounts, which were the most requested feature among their beta users. Additionally, this launch includes the integration of Google Ads, which allows real-time Google Ads spend tracking insights, as well as automatically extracting credit line invoices and generating and matching receipts for threshold payments.

Juni reports that in the past year they doubled the number of customers and card spends each quarter, as well as growing their team by 644% in 2021. This launch and rebranding is part of an expansion into the European Economic Area.

“We know the challenges that e-commerce entrepreneurs face because we’ve experienced the same headaches ourselves,” said Samir El-Sabini, co-founder and CEO, Juni. “That’s why we founded Juni. We’ve taken those problems and turned them into product features, and we’re passionate about creating a new approach to finance. We want to give our customers the right integrations, features and insights so they can make better business decisions and scale.”

Zevoy secures €15 million as expense management race heats up

Finnish startup Zevoy is the latest fintech to enter the booming expense management space, raising €15 million for a full-scale rollout across Europe.

Founded in 2020, Zevoy links smart payment cards to efficient expense management software.

“Expense management is a big pain point for many companies and their employees: it's time-consuming and the processes are often frustrating. To solve this, Zevoy offers an All-In-One business card (virtual or physical) with which you can scan receipts, match purchases with receipts, manage and forward expenses digitally into accounting,” explains Christoffer Rosqvist, CEO of Zevoy. “Zevoy focuses on underserved markets and especially growing companies have proven to be a sweet spot for Zevoy meaning companies that have high creditworthiness and profitability.”

He says Zevoy is looking to launch in eight new markets in total during Q2 of 2022.

“We foresee a fintech race taking place during 2022 and Zevoy is gearing up. In Finland and Sweden alone, we are adding on 100+ new customers per month and we feel confident that we have what it takes to replicate our secret sauce on eight new markets this upcoming quarter only,” says Rosqvist.

The funding round was led by Blossom Capital - Zevoy's first VC investor - with participation from Maki.vc and Brightly Ventures.

LPA hires Kristian Liiv as a regional manager for Scandinavia

LPA, the capital market technology and advisory firm, announced the hire of Kristian Liiv as the new Regional Manager for Scandinavia.

In his role, Kristian will lead client relationships in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark for LPA, and be responsible for the business development, strategy, and growth of LPA’s activity in the region. Kristian will be based in Stockholm, Sweden and will work to help LPA’s clients transform and digitise their activity, maximise productivity and ensure regulatory compliance.

Kristian has over 20 years of international experience in the financial technology and banking sector, with major companies including FIS, Provenir, Klarna, SEB and Swedbank, and vast knowledge and expertise in risk, credit and client relationship management.

Peter Schurau, CEO of LPA, commented: “LPA has been driving the digitalisation of the capital markets business for over 20 years and it’s important that we continue to build our presence across the Scandinavian region. Kristian’s expertise and knowledge of the financial services market will tremendously help to unlock our potential in the region and deliver LPA’s technology and advisory solutions to our clients across Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark.”