Klarpay obtains FINMA Fintech license

Martynas Bieliauskas and Mihkel Vitsur started Klarpay out of the their personal frustration with business banking. "From our experience as internet entrepreneurs, established financial institutions always had a hard time understanding and evaluating our business cases", says CEO Bieliauskas. With the increasing compliance requirements from the regulators, traditional financial institutions have difficulty classifying the risks related to seemingly complex online businesses. To play safe, many refuse to onboard such companies, potentially hindering innovation. "What we witness is that innovative startups are forced to constantly chase financial solutions, while they should be focusing on developing their business.", adds Bieliauskas.

Even when online companies get their Swiss accounts, there is yet another issue. Financial institutions do not offer all the products and services needed by these digital entrepreneurs. Klarpay wants to fill the gap. Leveraging its proprietary technology, Klarpay can offer over 436 payment acceptance methods in more than 96 regions. Additionally, Klarpay can disburse funds to 169 countries in 65 locally preferred methods. "We don't want to invent anything new. Reliable solutions are out there. By bundling the best of breed payment products, we can offer these as an all-in-one package to online businesses.", concludes Bieliauskas.

This week Klarpay has obtained a FINMA fintech license. Switzerland introduced the Fintech license in 2019 to attract modern financial institutions and Klarpay is one of the first ones to receive the authorisation. Klarpay plan to begin the process of onboarding clients in the 2nd half of 2021.