Minsait, an Indra company, has acquired 100% ownership of Afterbanks, a Spanish fintech start-up that provides an outstanding technology that allows real-time data aggregation and retrieval from different banks. Moreover, it provides a new payment initiator that allows secure instant payments.
This acquisition accelerates Minsait’s advance in the open banking business, with great potential especially in Europe and Latin America, as it complements its advanced offer for the financial sector and expands the value proposition and benefits of its solutions in areas such as payment methods, data intelligence or solutions that facilitate companies’ financial management.
It is also the second startup purchase operation, following the acquisition of a stake in Finect, closed through Indraventures, Indra’s corporate vehicle to strengthen its relationship with startups, spinoffs, universities, and intra-entrepreneurs; channel and finance initiatives aimed at accelerating innovation in Indra. It ratifies, therefore, the success of Indra’s open innovation model, which aims to improve its offer and strengthen its technological leadership.
The joint value proposition of Afterbanks and Minsait ensures the highest performance in data intelligence services, security, and payments in the new environment of open banking, which has made possible the new European Payments Directive PSD2, which places financial institutions at the centre of an ecosystem in which other service providers can access banking data, with the customer’s authorization, and initiate payments, making it possible to develop new business models with guaranteed security. Once PSD2 is implemented, payment initiation is expected to grow by 29% per year in Europe.
Afterbanks technology is already being tested in advanced digital transformation initiatives in large companies, for example, to facilitate “invisible payments” in shops through facial recognition; real-time profiling for digital consumer finance; or bank reconciliation to facilitate the provision of proactive financing solutions to SMEs.
Afterbanks, with offices in Spain and the United Kingdom, currently offers connections with more than a hundred banks, all of which operate in Spain and another 20 in countries such as Chile, Mexico, Canada, and the United States. It has more than 120,000 companies and individuals that make use of its technology.
Afterbanks has received since its inception the support of the Marine Enterprise hub promoted by Juan Roig, president of Mercadona, being accelerated by Lanzadera in 2018. In the same year, it raised funds from Angel’s investors such as François Derbaix and Fernando Cabello Astolfi. The company will maintain its usual brand and operations as well as the services it provides to its customers, thus, operating in the exact same way they have done so far. In addition to its technological capabilities, Minsait will provide Afterbanks with a complementary customer base and global presence to facilitate the export of its products.
INDRAVENTURES, A VEHICLE TO SUPPORT THE ENTREPRENEURIAL ECOSYSTEM AND INNOVATION
The agreement for the acquisition of Afterbanks has been signed in Valencia and has been closed through Indraventures. It is part of Indra’s open, agile and flexible innovation model, which aims to expand and strategically accelerate the capacity to generate and capture disruptive ideas that can contribute to improving the portfolio and generate a new, more innovative culture in the organization.
Since its beginning in 2017, Indraventures has analyzed more than 700 startups and has provided Indra with agreements with some of them such as Finect, a fintech from which it has taken a stake; AutoDrive Solutions (ADS), focused on the transport sector; the Italian company Greenrail, to collaborate in the railway sector; or Zero 2 Infinity, specialized in space transport. Through Indraventures, Indra has also launched with the Xunta de Galicia the accelerator specialized in the BFAero aerospace sector and with the Cabildo de Gran Canaria a call to support innovative ideas linked to its challenges as an intelligent island.