After Visa’s €1.8bn Tink deal, Mastercard snaps up Danish open banking firm Aiia

Less than a year after launching its open banking platform, Danish fintech Aiia has been acquired by US financial giant Mastercard for an undisclosed amount.

Mastercard said the European acquisition came as part of its larger global open banking strategy, which saw the group acquire US open banking group Finicity in 2020.

“The value of open banking comes through empowering consumers and businesses to use their own data to obtain financial services solutions simply, securely and quickly,” said Craig Vosburg, chief product officer of Mastercard.

“The addition of Aiia anchors our European open banking efforts and allows us to continue to meet our customers where they are.”

The deal comes just months after Visa’s bumper €1.8bn takeover of Swedish open banking platform Tink—still subject to regulatory approval.

Aiia, formerly known as Nordic API Gateway, was founded in 2011 and raised around €13.5m in equity funding from backers, including Denmark’s Danske Bank and Norway’s DNB.

“For the past decade, we have worked to build Aiia into a leading and quality-driven open banking platform, which has onboarded hundreds of banks and fintechs onto safe and secure open banking rails,” said Aiia CEO and founder Rune Mai.

“We have worked closely alongside banks, customers and local authorities to ensure that our APIs show the true effect of open banking.”

Mai said that journey will now continue as part of Mastercard, “empowering people to bring their financial data and accounts into play—safely and transparently.”