Fabrick sets sights on DACH region with finAPI acquisition

Italian Open Finance fintech Fabrick has agreed to acquire Open Finance solutions provider finAPI GmbH, marking its entry into the German market.

FinAPI, which was established in Munich in 2008, develops solutions for the aggregation and analysis of financial data, and serves more than 350 clients, among them banks, financial service providers and fintech companies, in Germany, as well as in Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary.

Paolo Zaccardi, Fabrick’s chief executive officer

The deal, which is subject to approval by the German and Italian supervisory authorities, is through an agreement signed with Schufa Holding, from which Fabrick will acquire 75% of finAPI.

The other 25% of the shares will remain with the two founders of finAPI, Dr Florian Haagen and Dr Martin Lacher.

The financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

Following the acquisition of finAPI, Fabrick’s presence will expand beyond its primary markets of Italy, Spain and the UK, into the DACH region.

Combined, Fabrick and finAPI’s client base will exceed 800, while together, the volume of account-to-account payments managed by Fabrick and finAPI in 2023, will take the total value of payments traded to more than €65 billion and over 11 billion API calls.

Paolo Zaccardi, chief executive officer of Fabrick, said: “This agreement to acquire finAPI, following the recent capital increase with Mastercard and Gruppo Reale Mutua and the acquisition of JudoPay in the United Kingdom, represents another significant milestone for Fabrick, enabling the proliferation of the internationalisation strategy defined since our inception.

“It allows us to enter the DACH region, an area of strategic importance in allowing us to scale up our operations and seize the growing opportunities offered by the sector in which we operate. This operation is also a further step in expanding our offering, which now covers the entire value chain of Open Finance services.”

Last year, Fabrick expanded its partnership with Mastercard to develop embedded finance solutions for businesses in Europe, as part of which Mastercard made a minority investment in the fintech.

Tanja Birkholz, chief executive officer of SCHUFA, added: “Technology plays an important role in developing customer-oriented products and services, and this requires strong partners capable of focusing on technological development. In this sense, Fabrick represents the ideal partner for the further development of finAPI.

“We know the needs of our customers, and Fabrick and finAPI possess the technological know-how to meet them, allowing them to benefit from further product developments in the field of Open Banking.”