iSignthis muscles into Lithuania’s paytech space with BBS acquisition
iSignthis flies in from Australia to buy Lithuania’s Baltic Banking Services
Australia’s financial services and payments technology provider iSignthis has acquired Baltic Banking Services (BBS), a Lithuania-based developer of banking software.
BBS provides solutions for connectivity to the SEPA Core and SEPA Instant networks, as well as specialised “document-driven” core banking modules, such as client onboarding (AML/KYC), transaction core, product configuration, electronic document management (automated document relations and storage) and reporting.
These solutions will be integrated into iSignthis’ Paydentity suite. “Paydentity fits neatly with BBS document management services, to finally put the ‘I’ into ‘signing this’ certificate and electronic documents,” states John Karantzis, CEO of iSignthis.
iSignthis will pay €150,000 upfront for BBS (half in cash and half in issued shares) and then a further earn-out fee, based on BBS’s 2019 earnings and capped at €1.5 million.
“Now, why would an Australian neobank, that is licensed in Cyprus, the EU28/EEA, and soon to be licensed as an authorised deposit-taking (ADI) in Australia, be interested in the Baltics and Lithuania?” Karantzis asks.
BBS is a registered testing partner with Central Bank of Lithuania (CBL), and already provides services to 16 financial institutions, licensed by CBL, eight of which are banks/credit unions and eight are payment service providers. “BBS literally cut out man months of effort from integration with CBL to get companies processing faster,” he notes.
“CBL has built some really cool and advanced infrastructure, that allows fintechs access to the SEPA and European Banking Core network, as well as the SEPA Instant Network. CBL really is streets ahead in terms of technology of every other central bank in Europe,” he continues.
“With Brexit looming, everyone in the European fintech space knows that Lithuania is THE place to be for fintechs, e-money institutions and special purpose banks. There is now a queue of over 200 fintechs waiting to get access… some of which will need gateway and other BBS services we would expect!”
Bringing together the products of iSignthis and BBS, such as SEPA Gateway, the Probanx CorePlus banking system, ISXPay and Paydentity, the vendor will be able to offer “a fully integrated solution” to these entities, Karantzis explains.
“We have big plans for both Probanx and BBS, and delivering technology licensing alongside our wholesale business-to-business (B2B) neobanking services,” he states.
