D8 Corporation has planned to invest 2 million euros in R&D activities and opening of a new subsidiary in the Middle East region. To implement this plan, D8 Corporation will use 0.7 million euros of its own capital, as well as has closed a deal for additional 1.3 million euros with Citadele Bank, in joint partnership with Altum Credit Guarantee program.
“We’ve been working globally for more than 10 years already and 90% of our clients come from abroad. We see very well that improved quality, productivity and creation of highly innovative solutions is only possible if we continuously invest in our business. These 2 million euros of additional financing will allow us to increase the pace of our development, sales and marketing activities. Our software is created mostly for growing banks and financial institutions, that’s why our offering has to be highly secure and technologically advanced. For example, in 2016 our company was the one who developed HCE wallet for Citadele Bank, which was the first solution of this kind in the Baltic region at the time (D8 editor’s note. – we also did it again with Citadele in 2020, when we launched the first ApplePay wallet in the Baltics). Right now we are working on further development of machine learning capabilities in our Gate2Bank StrongHold risk management platform and on overall improvements in our Gate2Bank Tokenization Platform product. We are also working on making our products available to small financial institutions and startups under Software as a Service (SAAS) model, to provide them with more flexibility and save them money from purchasing costly hardware and software components. Of course, COVID-19 pandemic has made its corrections in our industry throughout 2020, as we’ve witnessed a sharp increase in demand for online shopping – in some segments it has grown by up to 200%. All this growth creates a need for more powerful and adaptable IT systems,” – Juris Scerbickis, Chairman of the Board at D8 Corporation comments on the situation in the IT industry.
D8 Corporation has four offices and three of them are located outside of Latvia. Part of the financing D8 Corporation raised will be used to open one additional office in the Middle East region. “We are pleased to see that in the last three years our solutions have sparked interest of clients in the Middle East (especially in Dubai, which is a regional financial center), because of their quality and very competitive pricing. Now we provide jobs to 90 specialists (largely in Latvia) and this financing will allow us to create 10 additional jobs for various specialists,” – Juris Scerbickis acknowledges.
So far Gate2Bank StrongHold risk management platform has received the most interest from the clients in Arabian Gulf region. Payment card fraudsters are inventing new and more sophisticated fraud schemes every year and it becomes harder to detect them. Machine learning module will increase the analytical power and precision of Gate2Bank StrongHold, making it even more competitive on the global financial technology market.
“Export of innovative and competitive IT solutions is a way how we can show high expertise of Latvian specialists and encourage our country’s leadership in digital technologies. For entrepreneurs, this is a time when effective IT solutions are searched and it is commendable that a Latvian company can successfully export digital technologies to other parts of the world too. In order to effectively develop banking services and improve customer experience, we partner with local and global financial technology companies. D8 Corporation has been our technology partner for many years and together we have implemented many innovations in financial services, for example, payments with a mobile phone and with Apple Pay,” – Rūta Ežerskiene, Member of the Board at Citadele Bank emphasizes.
D8 Corporation has more than 18 years of experience in financial software development, integration and support (D8 editor’s note. – actually, we have just celebrated our 19-th birthday on 1-st of April this year (not a joke)). Among D8 Corporation’s clients are both large and small banks, PSPs and companies from other industries that are building their own payment systems with the help of D8. D8 Corporation offers traditional banking systems for payment cards processing, customized solutions for internet banks and payment systems, digital wallets and loyalty management solutions (D8 editor’s note. – take a look at the full list right here), as well as fraud prevention and anti money laundering solutions. D8 Corporation, by gathering creative and talented technology people (D8 editor’s note. – you can read more about our team), is offering innovative solutions to clients in banking and finance industry in more than 30 countries across EMEA.
About Citadele Bank
The mission of Citadele is to modernize the banking industry and provide more possibilities to the clients and businesses in the Baltics.
In addition to the classic banking services, Citadele also offers its clients a host of new services, based on financial technologies: starting from modern apps, contactless payments and fast payments, and ending with being the first in the Baltics to offer remote account opening with a selfie, payments with an NFC ring and payments to mobile numbers.
Citadele is the second largest bank in Latvia by its assets. Citadele Group is managed from Latvia. Its subsidiaries and branches are operating in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.