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2019 was a key year for iDenfy Lithuania’s fintech sector, with the number of companies in the sector rising to more than 200 and the country being recognized as one of the most dynamic fintech hubs globally, according to a new report by Invest Lithuania, the Lithuanian investment promotion agency.

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Lithuania is now home to 210 fintech companies, a 24% increase compared with the previous year, and has issued 102 licenses going towards electronic money institutions (EMIs), payment institutions, and so-called special purpose banks. In 2019, the number of people employed by companies in the sector rose 30% to 3,400.

The figures make Lithuania the second largest fintech hub in Europe by number of licensed companies, only behind the UK, and the largest within the EU, the report says.

Payments and remittance is the most crowded segment within Lithuania’s fintech startups ecosystem with 78 companies (37%). Other developed segments include financial software (10%), digital banking (8%), online investment and peer-to-peer (P2P) lending (8%), and consumer lending (7%).

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Local fintech leaders in Lithuania include FinBee, a P2P lending platform, Fininbox, a banking system provider, Mano Bankas, the first licensed digital bank in Lithuania, MoQ, a mobile payments platform, NEO Finance, a P2P lending platform, Paysera, an EMI, Profitus, a real estate crowdfunding platform, Savy, a P2P online lending marketplace, and SME Finance, which provides business funding solutions through invoice finance and business l****.

2019 also saw Lithuania gain further international recognition as a fintech hub with a 50% growth in the number of foreign companies establishing an office in the Baltic country. Several of these international fintechs have expanded both the size of their teams and the range of functions that are carried out in their Lithuanian offices, the report says.

Currently, international fintechs in Lithuania include Blender, a P2P lending platform from Israel, Contis, a UK-based provider of end-to-end banking and payments solutions, deVere, a wealthtech company headquartered in Dubai, Earthport, a cross-border payments services provider from the UK, Factris, a provider of working capital to SMEs from the Netherlands, Sonect, a Swiss payments startup specialized in virtual ATMs, Flywire, a payments company from the US, and SumUp, a London-based mobile payments company.