The Background The adoption of the new payment directives (PSD2) changed the way payment providers were treated. The infrastructure of the banking system was to be revised, thus creating space for new players. The aim was to harmonize consumer protection and at the same time create fairer conditions of competition for users and payment service providers. Since its founding, figo has been the first European banking service provider to provide access to financial data, networking services, apps and banks with financial sources. With the full implementation of the PSD2, figo became the category leader in this field.

The Deal figo and finreach solutions have joined forces and act as one company from now on. The transaction was already announced in March but was still subject to approval by the Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht (BaFin), which has now been granted. IEG - Investment Banking Group, led by Stefan Heilmann, acted as Financial Advisor for figo. Already in 2016, IEG carried out figo's growth financing round of EUR 6.8 million with Deutsche Börse and its investment vehicle DB1 Ventures.

The Partners The banking service provider figo and the fintech platform finreach solutions are joining forces and will work together at the Berlin and Hamburg locations in the future. Together, both fintech companies offer their current and future business customers a broad spectrum of digital finance products, based on relevant data sources and in compliance with PSD2 regulations. In the past, finreach solutions has successfully implemented digital SaaS solutions, such as digital account switching for bank partners like Deutsche Bank, DKB and Postbank, all under the FinReach brand. figo is a pioneer in the Smart Data Connectivity, Open Banking and License-as-a-Service fields and is the first German provider to hold a corresponding PSD2 license for 10 European countries. Markus Dränert (CEO), Cornelia Schwerter (CRO) and Taner Akcok (CPO) form the management team.

The Perspective The merger of both companies was mostly a logical consequence due to a longstanding and close partnership. According to Cornelia Schwerter, CRO at figo, both companies will use this merger "to offer existing and new customers of the same target group a much broader range of digital financial products as well as to expand the scope and quality of the database for these services". In addition, Markus Dränert, CEO of finreach solutions, states that the company's goal is to "become the leading Fintech platform delivering high-quality SaaS applications and API solutions".