Danske Bank has invested into Denmark-based personal finance app Spiir, becoming its co-owner.
The platform helps consumers to manage their budgets, monitor spending and explore alternatives for fixed expenses and bills. Founded in 2011, the company gives customers insights into where their money is going and how they can make savings.
As part of the transaction, customers will receive easier access to viewing their accounts with other banks through Danske Bank’s mobile app. Spiir will also enable users to track their spending and manage finances.
This investment will give Danske Bank access to Spiir’s platform and will help it meet the requirements of PSD2, which enforces banks to make customer data available to third parties. It will also help Danske with opening up to partnerships to helping consumers manage their day-to-day finances. The platform will also help with accelerated expansion in other Nordic countries.
Danske Bank head of commercial excellence in group development Lars Malmberg said, “We collaborate with several FinTech businesses on developing new customer solutions within Open Banking. But the agreement with Spiir is the first time that Danske Bank also becomes a co-owner.”
Following the partnership, Malmberg sees Spiir as a way to develop its own Nordic API gateway and make it easier for third parties to build new smart customer solutions with the bank.
PSD2 will oblige a bank to provide access to its customers payment accounts to other payment services providers to help them offer their services across the EU. This obligation is not until 2019 and the Nordic API gateway is a way for Danske Bank and other banks, FinTechs and others to give customers access to their bank data before the PSD2 APIs are launched by banks.
Spiir CEO Rune Mai said, “With Danske Bank to back us, we now have the opportunity to accelerate the development of both Spiir and Nordic API Gateway.
“The partnership represents a benefit for consumers because they can use their data where it makes sense, but also for businesses, where one can, for example, imagine liquidity management or accounting solutions that automatically perform reconciliations with a bank.”
Danske Bank also recently formed an agreement with subscription management platform Minna Technologies.
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