Nordigen

Nordigen, now a GoCardless company, emerged from the Latvian fintech scene in 2016, founded by Rolands Mesters and Roberts Bernans. The duo, both alumni of the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, shared a vision to democratize access to financial data. Mesters, with a background in finance and entrepreneurship, and Bernans, with experience in credit and advisory at Ernst & Young, combined their expertise to tackle the complexities of open banking. Their initial focus was on providing analytics to help lenders assess creditworthiness by extracting insights from raw account data.

The company distinguished itself in the European market by launching a freemium open banking platform. This model offered developers and fintech companies free access to its Account Information Service Provider (AISP) API, which connected to over 2,300 banks across 31 European countries. This strategy was designed to remove the significant cost barriers associated with accessing banking data, thereby fostering experimentation and broader adoption of open banking. While basic data access was free, Nordigen generated revenue through a suite of premium products. These paid services provided valuable data enrichment, cleaning, and analytical insights, transforming raw, unstructured transaction data into standardized, actionable information for use cases like credit assessments, personal finance management, and customer onboarding.

This business model proved disruptive and successful, positioning Nordigen as a key player in the open banking infrastructure space. Its trajectory culminated in a significant milestone in July 2022, when it was acquired by GoCardless, a global leader in direct bank payments. The acquisition integrated Nordigen's extensive bank connectivity into the GoCardless network, combining data access with payment expertise to offer a comprehensive open banking-as-a-service solution. Following the acquisition, Rolands Mesters and Roberts Bernans transitioned into leadership roles at GoCardless, continuing to drive the open banking vision. The Nordigen product was officially relaunched as GoCardless Bank Account Data in April 2023.

Keywords: open banking, API, financial data, AISP, GoCardless, bank connectivity, data enrichment, transaction data, credit assessment, fintech infrastructure, PSD2, account information services, freemium API, financial data analytics, bank account data, lending solutions, customer onboarding, financial transparency, account aggregation, payment services