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Lithuania, the European Union’s fastest-growing fintech hub, is seeing an “evolutionary” shift away from traditional banks with surging transactions for e-money and payment companies.
The Baltic country, whose financial industry is dominated by Nordic lenders like SEB Bankas AB and Swedbank AB, joined the global push to shakeup traditional banking four years ago by offering simplified, fast licensing covering all 27 EU members.
The initiative has taken off: Lithuania ranks fourth in the world for fintech ecosystems. Outgoing Central bank Governor Vitas Vasiliauskas said fintech transactions gained a larger share last year, though he acknowledges money-laundering risks after scandals in neighboring Latvia and Estonia involving illicit cash from the former Soviet Union.
The ecosystem for fintech is there, which means we can expect some changes in competition for financial services,” Vasiliauskas, who also sits on the European Central Bank’s Governing Council, said this week in an interview. “We need additional time for bigger changes because fintechs have to grow stronger. But in the field of payments, from year to year, we see an evolutionary decreasing role of the banking sector and an increase for fintechs.”more at Bloomberg