Danish Fintech Trends 2020: Growth, Cooperation and More Sustainability

Another year has passed since the last iteration of Copenhagen Fintech Magazine, and it has been another outstanding year for Danish fintech.

The number of companies keeps rising and so does the scale: last year the Danish fintech scene passed 3000 jobs created – in a sector where layoff is more common than mass hiring these days.

While the fintech sector is growing as a whole, so are the individual companies. Some have seen themselves grow from rebellious challengers to young adults. They face new challenges – e.g. regulation when obtaining financial and banking licenses – but that is all part of growing up.

Even as they grow, they insist on remaining an alternative – a “something else” – to the established landscape. Maybe this is one of the answers to the increased number of partnerships in still more business-critical areas between fintechs and established players.

In the past year, we also saw PSD2 fully implemented, and according to a survey done by Nordic API Gateway, the majority of financial decision makers in the Nordics are already aware of PSD2. Being aware is one thing, but acting accordingly is something different.

Luckily, the survey also shows that 3 out of 4 financial institutions have already made at least one change to their business as a result of PSD2, a mere six month after its implementation. But even as the financial establishment sees itself invest in PSD2, they expect it to benefit their consumers the most (45%), followed by technology startups (24%). Only 3% see banks as the biggest beneficiary of the directive and the changes following it.

However, they almost unanimously agree that we haven’t seen the peak of PSD2-innovation yet. Decisionmakers still believe we will see more tech startups thrive on the new possibilities (90%) and increased competition (88%) – leading to pressure to improve customer service (82%).

And this leads us back to the changes fintech companies are still promising to deliver. Not just in terms of making banking life more convenient and accessible but also as a broader promise to impact society and deliver on UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. 1 in 5 of the 250 danish fintechs are already working with impact and sustainability in many different ways.