Romanian Open Banking Startup Finqware Raises €500K Seed Round

On January 21, 2021, Romanian open banking startup Finqware announced a €500K seed round led by Elevator Ventures, the venture capital arm of Raiffeisen Bank International, with co-investment from GapMinder VC. Founded in 2018 and headquartered in Romania, Finqware provides cloud-based middleware enabling multi-banking data aggregation, effectively serving as a banking-as-a-platform bridge between end users and financial institutions. The company operates in Romania, Croatia, and Greece, having achieved 90% market coverage in Croatia through a May 2020 pilot and connecting Romania's largest bank, Banca Transilvania, to five other banks' APIs in October 2020 for the country's first commercial open banking use case.

Elevator Ventures' Managing Director Maximilian Schausberger cited Finqware's technology and existing projects as evidence of its potential to become a European Open Banking leader. The funding will be used to accelerate expansion and product development across the CEE region. The strategic investment from Raiffeisen's VC arm underscores growing bank interest in open banking infrastructure providers as enablers of embedded finance in emerging European markets.