23. may 2019
The UK branch of LHV Bank, serving the financial technology companies, plans to start offering real-time pound payments to payment intermediary clients in June. To date, LHV has opened an account with the Bank of England and is joining the Faster Payments scheme as a direct member.
Joining the real-time Faster Payments scheme gives the LHV branch a unique advantage in providing 24h real-time payments to fintech companies via the LHV Connect API (application programming interface) in both euro and pound payments. This is the first bank API that allows it. LHV started with pound payments on 13 May and is currently testing the movement of payments with UK banks. The LHV branch also plans to start issuing UK bank accounts in June to its fintech clients.
‘Despite a continued confusion regarding the fate of Brexit, our first year in the UK has been hugely successful – we have more than doubled the number of clients from LHV financial technology companies and payment mediators during the year and are already operating profitably,’ commented Andres Kitter, Head of Business at LHV's UK branch and payment mediators. ‘We have now developed our main products for fintech companies and hope to actively grow the business in this area,’ Kitter added.
In March, LHV began offering payment mediators a virtual IBAN service that allows clients to be issued personalized bank account numbers, which clients can then pass on to end-users. The first clients have already started to use virtual IBANs. In April, LHV also made instant payments in euros available to clients through the LHV Connect API.
LHV opened its UK branch in March 2018 and aims to serve clients from the bank's payment intermediaries business line, as London is the most important hub for financial technology companies in Europe. Retail clients and non-payment mediators are not served by LHV in the United Kingdom. Within a year, LHV has raised the number of payment intermediaries clients from 30 to 75. Clients include a number of top financial technology companies such as Transferwise and Coinbase, or recently onboarded Airwallex.
LHV Group is the largest domestic financial group and capital provider in Estonia. LHV Group's key subsidiaries are LHV Pank and LHV Varahaldus. LHV employs over 400 people. LHV’s banking services are used by 174,000 clients, and pension funds managed by LHV have more than 177,000 active clients.
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