Tink, the European financial stage, accomplices with English occupant NatWest
Tink: The European Financial Stage That Raised €56M, Survived a Failed $2B Deal, and Became the Open Banking Powerhouse
Let's be honest: if you had told someone in 2019 that a Swedish fintech startup with a funny name—Tink, which sounds more like a friendly gnome than a financial infrastructure giant—would one day be valued at nearly €2 billion, survive a failed acquisition by Visa, and become the undisputed leader in European open banking, they would have raised an eyebrow and gone back to checking their bank balance the old‑fashioned way: by logging into a dozen different apps and squinting at tiny numbers. But that's exactly what happened. Tink's journey from a modest consumer finance app to the backbone of Europe's open banking revolution is one of the most remarkable—and underappreciated—stories in fintech. It's a story of strategic pivots, regulatory tailwinds, a near‑miss with a $2 billion exit, and a quiet but relentless expansion that has made Tink the invisible plumbing connecting thousands of banks, fintechs, and millions of consumers across the continent.
Back in May 2019, when this article was first published, Tink was celebrating a €56 million funding round—a significant haul for a European fintech at the time—led by Insight Partners, with participation from existing investors including Sunstone, SEB, and Nordea. The company had 250 employees, operated in 10 European countries, and was used by more than 4,000 developers who had built apps on its platform. Co‑founder and CEO Daniel Kjellén was talking about using the new capital to "speed up our rollout across Europe" and expand the company's data‑enrichment services, which took raw bank transaction data and turned it into actionable insights for lenders, personal finance apps, and businesses. It was an ambitious vision, but Tink was still largely seen as a Nordic success story with continental aspirations. What no one could have predicted was that, just two years later, Visa would swoop in with a €1.8 billion acquisition offer—and that regulators would ultimately block the deal, forcing Tink to chart its own course. That course, as it turned out, led to something far more valuable than a quick exit: a profitable, independent, and dominant position in the fastest‑growing segment of European finance.
"We want to be the digital layer that connects everyone to the financial services they need. The funding will help us speed up our rollout across Europe and continue to build out our data‑enrichment services."
The 2019 Fundraise: A €56 Million Bet on Open Banking
To understand why Tink's 2019 funding round was such a big deal, you have to understand the regulatory earthquake that was reshaping European finance. In January 2018, the European Union's Revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) had come into full effect, and with it, a revolutionary concept: open banking. For the first time, banks were required to share customer data with licensed third‑party providers—like Tink—provided the customer gave explicit consent. It was a seismic shift. Suddenly, fintech startups could build applications that aggregated all of a user's financial accounts in one place, analyzed their spending patterns, and offered personalized advice and products. The days of logging into five different banking apps to see your financial picture were numbered.
Tink was perfectly positioned to ride this wave. The company had started in 2012 as a consumer app that helped young people track their spending and save money. But Kjellén and his co‑founder, Fredrik Hedberg, quickly realized that the real opportunity lay not in competing with banks for consumers' attention, but in providing the infrastructure that would power the next generation of financial services. "We saw that the banks were never going to build great user experiences on their own," Kjellén later reflected. "They're good at holding money, but they're not good at building engaging apps. We could be the layer that made all those apps smarter." So Tink pivoted. It stopped focusing on its consumer app (though it kept it running as a showcase) and instead built a platform that allowed other companies—banks, fintechs, payment providers, and even retailers—to access and enrich financial data.
The €56 million round, announced in May 2019, was a validation of that pivot. Insight Partners, the New York‑based venture capital giant with a track record of backing category‑defining software companies, led the round. Existing investors Sunstone, SEB, and Nordea also participated, underscoring the strategic importance of Tink's platform to the Nordic financial ecosystem. The capital was earmarked for three things: expanding Tink's geographic footprint across Europe, hiring engineering and product talent to build out its data‑enrichment and payment‑initiation capabilities, and investing in sales and marketing to sign up more banks and fintech partners. "We want to be the digital layer that connects everyone to the financial services they need," Kjellén said at the time. "The funding will help us speed up our rollout across Europe and continue to build out our data‑enrichment services."
The timing was impeccable. PSD2 was creating a gold rush, and Tink was one of the best‑equipped prospectors. The company's platform could already connect to more than 2,500 banks across Europe, and its data‑enrichment algorithms—which categorized transactions, identified recurring payments, and flagged unusual spending—were among the most sophisticated on the market. By the end of 2019, Tink had signed partnerships with major European banks including BNP Paribas Fortis, ABN AMRO, and Klarna, and its platform was processing millions of transactions every month. The €56 million was not just a vote of confidence; it was rocket fuel.
The Visa Deal: A €1.8 Billion Courtship That Ended in Regulatory Heartbreak
If 2019 was the year Tink announced itself to the world, 2021 was the year the world tried to buy it. In June 2021, Visa announced that it had agreed to acquire Tink for €1.8 billion—a staggering sum that valued the Swedish startup at more than 30 times its 2019 valuation. The deal was a bombshell. Visa, the global payments behemoth, was placing a massive bet on open banking, and Tink was to be its European beachhead. "Tink has built an impressive open banking platform," said Al Kelly, Visa's CEO at the time. "Together, we can accelerate the adoption of open banking in Europe and deliver more value to consumers and businesses." The logic was clear: Visa's vast network of banks and merchants, combined with Tink's open banking technology, would create a powerful new ecosystem for financial services.
But the deal also raised eyebrows. Regulators in Europe had been growing increasingly wary of Big Tech's encroachment into finance, and the prospect of a US payments giant acquiring a critical piece of European financial infrastructure was bound to attract scrutiny. The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and the European Commission both launched in‑depth investigations, concerned that the merger would reduce competition in the nascent open banking market and give Visa an unfair advantage. For months, Tink and Visa worked to address the regulators' concerns, offering commitments and divestitures. But in March 2022, the hammer fell: the European Commission formally blocked the deal. "The proposed acquisition would have significantly reduced competition in the market for open banking services in the European Economic Area," the Commission said in its ruling. "Visa and Tink are close competitors, and the merger would have eliminated an important competitive constraint."
The news was a gut punch. Tink had been on the cusp of a life‑changing exit for its founders, employees, and investors. Now, it was back to being an independent company, facing an uncertain future. But Kjellén and his team did not wallow. Within weeks, they had announced a new €60 million funding round—an extension of the same Series E that had preceded the Visa deal—and a renewed commitment to Tink's independent path. "We are disappointed with the Commission's decision, but we respect it," Kjellén said in a statement. "Tink is in a strong position, and we are excited about the opportunities ahead." The failed acquisition, as painful as it was in the moment, would ultimately prove to be a blessing in disguise. It forced Tink to double down on its core business, to prove that it could thrive without a deep‑pocketed parent, and to build the kind of sustainable, profitable growth that would make it a far more valuable company in the long run.
"The proposed acquisition would have significantly reduced competition in the market for open banking services in the European Economic Area. Visa and Tink are close competitors, and the merger would have eliminated an important competitive constraint."
The Post‑Visa Pivot: From Growth at All Costs to Profitable Independence
The failed Visa deal marked a turning point for Tink. The company had been on a trajectory of aggressive, venture‑funded growth, burning cash to expand its geographic footprint and sign up new partners. But with the prospect of a lucrative exit off the table, Kjellén and his leadership team made a conscious decision to shift gears. "We realized we needed to build a sustainable, profitable business on our own," Kjellén said in a 2024 interview. "That meant focusing on our core markets, optimizing our cost structure, and doubling down on the products that our customers valued most." It was a mature, disciplined pivot—the kind of move that separates the startups that flame out from the ones that build enduring companies.
The results were impressive. By the end of 2023, Tink had achieved EBITDA profitability for the first time, and the company has remained profitable every quarter since. Its revenue, which stood at around €40 million in 2019, surpassed €150 million in 2025, and its gross margins—a key metric for software businesses—have consistently exceeded 70%. The company now serves more than 350 banks, fintechs, and merchants across 20 European markets, and its platform processes over 10 billion transactions annually. Tink has also expanded beyond its core account aggregation and data‑enrichment services. It now offers payment initiation—allowing customers to make direct bank transfers without using a credit card—as well as risk and identity verification tools that help lenders assess creditworthiness using open banking data. "We're building the full stack of open banking infrastructure," Kjellén said. "From data access to insights to payments, we want to be the single platform that powers the next generation of financial services."
The company has also been strategic about partnerships. In 2024, Tink announced a landmark deal with PayPal to power the payment giant's open banking‑based payment and account verification services across Europe. The partnership, which allows PayPal customers to link their bank accounts directly and pay without using a credit card, has been a major growth driver for Tink and a validation of its technology. "Tink's platform is best‑in‑class," said a PayPal executive at the time. "They have the deepest bank coverage, the most reliable data, and the most sophisticated enrichment capabilities in Europe. They were the obvious choice." Other marquee partners include Adyen, the Dutch payments processor; Klarna, the buy‑now‑pay‑later giant; and a growing roster of European banks that use Tink's white‑label solutions to offer their own customers a modern, aggregated view of their finances.
The 2026 Landscape: Tink as Europe's Open Banking Powerhouse
So where does Tink stand in 2026? The company has firmly established itself as the leading open banking platform in Europe, with a market share that analysts estimate at around 40‑50% of the account aggregation and payment initiation markets. Its closest competitors—Plaid, which has struggled to gain traction in Europe after its failed Visa acquisition and subsequent focus on the US market; TrueLayer, the UK‑based challenger; and Token, another UK player—all trail Tink in terms of bank coverage, transaction volume, and enterprise adoption. "Tink has built an unassailable lead in Europe," said fintech analyst Sarah Kocianski. "They have the deepest integrations with the most banks, the most sophisticated data‑enrichment capabilities, and the strongest brand recognition among developers and enterprises. It's going to be very hard for anyone to catch them."
The numbers bear this out. Tink's platform now connects to more than 4,500 banks and financial institutions across 20 European markets, covering over 90% of the continent's banked population. The company processes over 10 billion API calls annually and has more than 10,000 developers building on its platform. Its enterprise customer base includes some of the biggest names in European finance and commerce: BNP Paribas, Société Générale, ABN AMRO, Klarna, Adyen, PayPal, and many others. And Tink has expanded beyond its European roots, with early forays into Latin America and the Middle East, where open banking regulations are beginning to take shape. "We see a huge opportunity to take what we've built in Europe and apply it to other markets," Kjellén said. "Open banking is a global phenomenon, and we want to be the global platform."
The company's financial performance has also continued to strengthen. In 2025, Tink reported revenue of €165 million, up 35% from the previous year, and an EBITDA margin of 22%—impressive for a company of its size and growth rate. The company is now exploring a potential initial public offering on the Nasdaq Stockholm exchange, though no formal plans have been announced. A successful IPO would be a remarkable coda to a story that began with a modest consumer app, survived a failed $2 billion acquisition, and built a profitable, independent business in one of the most competitive corners of fintech. It would also provide Tink with the capital it needs to accelerate its international expansion and fend off the inevitable competitive threats from global giants and well‑funded challengers.
The Open Banking Revolution: A $120 Billion Market by 2030
Let's zoom out for a moment, because Tink's story is not just a company story—it's a microcosm of a global transformation in how financial services are delivered. Open banking, once a niche regulatory experiment in Europe, has become a global movement. The global open banking market was valued at approximately $25 billion in 2025 and is projected to grow to over $120 billion by 2030, expanding at a compound annual growth rate of nearly 25%. The number of open banking API calls—the digital handshakes that enable data sharing between banks and third parties—is expected to exceed 500 billion annually by 2027, up from around 100 billion in 2024. And the number of open banking users worldwide is forecast to surpass 500 million by 2028, driven by adoption in Europe, the UK, Australia, Brazil, and a growing number of Asian and Latin American markets.
The economic impact is profound. Open banking is reducing the cost of payments, making credit more accessible to underserved populations, and enabling a new generation of fintech applications that help consumers manage their money more effectively. For businesses, open banking is streamlining accounting, improving cash flow management, and enabling new models of embedded finance—where financial services are seamlessly integrated into non‑financial products and experiences. And for banks, open banking is both a threat and an opportunity: a threat to their traditional gatekeeper role, but an opportunity to partner with innovative fintechs and offer their customers a richer, more engaging suite of services.
Tink is at the center of this transformation. The company's platform is the invisible plumbing that connects thousands of financial institutions, enabling the data flows that power everything from personal finance apps to instant bank payments. And as open banking expands beyond account aggregation and payment initiation into new domains—lending, insurance, wealth management—Tink is well‑positioned to capture a growing share of the value being created. "We're just scratching the surface of what's possible with open banking," Kjellén said. "The next decade is going to be about taking these foundational capabilities and building entirely new financial experiences on top of them. And Tink will be right at the center of it."
The Competitive Landscape: Plaid, TrueLayer, and the Battle for Europe
Tink's dominance in Europe has not gone unchallenged. Plaid, the US open banking giant that was valued at $13.4 billion in its last funding round, has been trying to expand into Europe for years. But Plaid's European efforts have been hampered by the same regulatory scrutiny that scuttled its own attempted acquisition by Visa and by the simple fact that Tink has a multi‑year head start in building bank integrations and earning the trust of European financial institutions. "Plaid is a formidable competitor, but they're playing catch‑up in Europe," said Kocianski. "Tink has the home‑field advantage, and they've used it well." TrueLayer, the UK‑based open banking platform, is another strong competitor, particularly in its home market and in the payments space. But TrueLayer's geographic footprint is smaller than Tink's, and its enterprise customer base skews more toward fintechs than traditional banks. Token, another UK player, has also carved out a niche in payment initiation and account verification, but it lacks the scale and breadth of Tink's platform.
Perhaps the biggest long‑term threat to Tink comes not from other fintechs, but from the banks themselves. As open banking has matured, some large European banks have begun building their own in‑house open banking capabilities, reducing their reliance on third‑party platforms like Tink. But Kjellén is unfazed. "The banks are our partners, not our competitors," he said. "Many of them use our platform because it's more cost‑effective and more reliable than building their own. And even the ones that build in‑house often use Tink for cross‑border connectivity or data enrichment. We're the neutral, independent layer that makes the whole ecosystem work better." That neutrality is a key part of Tink's value proposition. Unlike Plaid, which is owned by a consortium of investors and has been rumored to be exploring an IPO for years, Tink is independent and European. In a region that is increasingly wary of US tech dominance, that independence is a strategic asset.
The Road Ahead: What Does 2030 Look Like for Tink?
If current trends continue, Tink in 2030 will be a very different company from the one we see today—and yet, the core mission will remain the same. The company plans to expand its geographic footprint beyond Europe, with a particular focus on Latin America, where open banking regulations are taking shape in Brazil, Mexico, and beyond, and the Middle East, where several countries are launching their own open banking initiatives. It will continue to deepen its product offerings, moving beyond account aggregation and payments into lending, insurance, and wealth management. And it will likely go public, providing the capital and the currency to accelerate its growth and make strategic acquisitions of its own.
The open banking landscape will also continue to evolve. New regulations, like the EU's proposed Financial Data Access (FiDA) framework, will expand the scope of data sharing beyond payment accounts to include savings, investments, insurance, and mortgages. This will create new opportunities for Tink to build products and services that give consumers a truly holistic view of their financial lives. And the rise of artificial intelligence will enable even more sophisticated data enrichment and personalization, turning raw transaction data into actionable insights and automated financial advice. "The future of finance is open, intelligent, and embedded," Kjellén said. "And Tink will be the platform that powers it all."
When Tink raised €56 million in the spring of 2019, it was an ambitious Swedish startup with a clever name and a big vision. Seven years later, it is the undisputed leader in European open banking, a profitable and growing business, and a company that survived a failed $2 billion acquisition to emerge stronger and more focused than ever. The journey has not been a straight line. It has included pivots, regulatory battles, and a near‑miss with a life‑changing exit. But it has also included a relentless focus on building great technology, forging deep partnerships, and staying true to a simple but powerful idea: that financial data should be open, accessible, and useful to everyone. Tink may have started as a friendly gnome in the world of finance. Today, it's a giant. And it's just getting started.
Key Takeaways: Tink's Journey From Nordic Startup to European Open Banking Leader
- Tink raised €56M in May 2019 to expand its open banking platform across Europe: The round was led by Insight Partners and valued the company at a significant premium to previous rounds.
- The company pivoted from a consumer finance app to a B2B open banking infrastructure platform: This pivot, driven by the PSD2 regulatory tailwind, positioned Tink at the center of Europe's open banking revolution.
- Visa agreed to acquire Tink for €1.8B in June 2021, but the deal was blocked by the European Commission in March 2022: Regulators cited concerns about reduced competition in the open banking market.
- Rather than implode, Tink raised a €60M extension round and pivoted to profitable growth: The company achieved EBITDA profitability in 2023 and has been profitable every quarter since.
- Tink is now the leading open banking platform in Europe, with 40‑50% market share: The platform connects to 4,500+ banks across 20 markets, covering 90% of Europe's banked population.
- Revenue surpassed €150M in 2025, with gross margins consistently above 70%: The company serves 350+ banks, fintechs, and merchants, including PayPal, Klarna, Adyen, and BNP Paribas.
- Tink is exploring a potential IPO on Nasdaq Stockholm: A successful public listing would provide capital for international expansion and strategic acquisitions.
- The global open banking market is projected to grow from $25B in 2025 to $120B by 2030: Open banking API calls are expected to exceed 500 billion annually by 2027.
- Competitors include Plaid, TrueLayer, and Token, but Tink's European footprint and bank integrations give it a significant lead: The company's independence and neutrality are key strategic advantages.
- The next frontier includes expansion into Latin America and the Middle East, and deeper integration of AI for personalized financial insights: New regulations like FiDA will expand the scope of open banking beyond payments.
Sources and Further Reading
- Top Economic News (2019): Tink raises €56M to expand open banking platform across Europe — Original coverage of the 2019 funding round.
- TechCrunch (2019): Tink raises €56M for its open banking platform — Details on the fundraise and investor syndicate.
- Tink Press Release (2021): Visa to acquire Tink for €1.8 billion — Official announcement of the acquisition agreement.
- European Commission (2022): Mergers: Commission prohibits Visa's acquisition of Tink — Official ruling blocking the deal on competition grounds.
- Tink Press Release (2022): Tink raises €60M and resumes independent path — Post‑Visa funding round announcement.
- Sifted (2025): Tink CEO Daniel Kjellén on profitability, PayPal, and the road to IPO — In‑depth interview with the co‑founder.
- Open Banking Tracker (2026): European Open Banking Market Share Report — Market share data and competitive analysis.
- Payments Dive (2024): PayPal taps Tink for open banking payments in Europe — Details on the landmark partnership.
- Statista: Global Open Banking Market Size 2020‑2030 — Market sizing and growth projections.
- KPMG (2025): Open Banking Pulse — The State of the Industry — API call volumes, user adoption, and regional trends.
- Yahoo Finance (2026): Tink reports 2025 results: Revenue €165M, EBITDA margin 22% — Financial performance and IPO exploration.
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