Fastok continues its strategy of international growth and consolidation by announcing the agreement for the acquisition of FinAPI, one of Germany’s leading operators of open finance solutions.
The transaction, which is subject to the approval of the German and Italian supervisory authorities and a closing process that will take place in the coming months, involves the purchase of 75% of FinAPI from Schufa Holding. The remaining 25% of the company will remain with the two founders, Florian Haagen and Martin Lacher.who will continue to play roles of responsibility within the company, ensuring continuity of relations with the market and the customer portfolio.
FinApi, founded in Munich in 2008 to develop solutions for the aggregation and analysis of financial data, is one of the pioneers in open banking, data intelligence, and payments. It serves more than 350 customers, including banks, financial service providers, fintech, insurance companies and software providers in Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary.
With this operation, Fabrick, after Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom, aims to enter another highly strategic market such as that of the DACH Region, acquiring a prominent position in Germany and positioning itself among the most relevant operators in the open finance segment at European level.
Adding up the volume of account2account payments managed by Fabrick and FinAPI in 2023, with over 800 total customers, in fact, it exceeds 65 billion euros in brokered value and more than 11 billion API calls, leading Fabrick to become the main operator in the two Italian and German reference markets.
These numbers are particularly important if we consider that payments and their digital evolution represent the most important component in the setting up of new service models and B2B and B2B2C relationships. Aware of the growing demand for secure and flexible transactions, companies across all industries across Europe are increasingly adopting Embedded Finance to bring cost-efficiency and flexibility to their organisations, while offering speed and security to their customers.
A component, that of payments, that Fabrick has always seen as the key to growth and that today it governs with even greater completeness thanks to its know-how, proprietary platform and targeted acquisition strategy that allow it to strengthen its unique positioning on the market. Six years after its inception, Fabrick has established itself as an operator that, in the convergence between open banking and open payment, has been able to oversee the entire supply chain of services, differentiating itself from others, focused on vertical segments. A breadth of action in the world of payments and in terms of geographical footprint, which gives Fabrick solidity in the growing embedded finance market.
Paolo Zaccardi, CEO of Fabrick, said in a note: “This agreement, after the recent capital increase with Mastercard and Gruppo Reale Mutua and the acquisition of JudoPay in the United Kingdom, is another important step for Fabrick because it allows us to continue the internationalization strategy defined since our inception. It allows us to enter the DACH Region, an area of great prospects and key to achieving the optimal size and seizing the growing opportunities offered by the sector in which we operate. This transaction is also a further step in the expansion of our offering, which today covers the entire value chain of open finance services”.
The strategic nature of the German market is confirmed by the results of the study “Embrace Embedded Finance For Seamless Payment Success: A Spotlight On Europe”, carried out by Forrester Consulting for Fabrick. Of the 126 German decision-makers and managers surveyed, 74% said they will invest or increase investments in payment acceptance solutions over the next 24 months. Specifically, 77% of the sample will assign a high priority to payment orchestration solutions and 71% to solutions to accept account-to-account payments via API.
The combined portfolio of FinAPI and Fabrick will offer customers a wider range of centralized digital solutions. In particular, FinAPI’s customers will benefit from this merger, thanks to Fabrick’s European coverage and broad portfolio of payment solutions.
Tanja Birkholz, CEO of Schufa, says: “Over the past three years, we have worked intensively with the aim of creating as much value as possible for individuals and companies. Technology plays an important role in the development of customer-oriented products and services, and this requires strong partners who can focus on technology development. In this sense, Fabrick is the ideal partner for the further development of FinAPI. We know our customers’ needs and Fabrick and FinAPI have the technological know-how to meet them, allowing them to benefit from further product developments in open banking.”
Florian Haagen, CEO and co-founder of FinApi and Martin Lacher, COO and co-founder of FinAPI, say: “The transaction with Fabrick, with its European approach, offers great opportunities for everyone. Together with the business in the German market, we will continue to actively define the future of open finance in Europe.”
Following the transaction, which is subject to the approval of the German and Italian supervisory authorities, FinAPI will remain regulated in Germany and will continue its strategic collaboration with Schufa for the development of open finance in the German market.
The value of the transaction was not disclosed.
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