- Award-winning mobile payments company, Auka, announces new mobile app coming to Croatia in 2019
- Settle available to anyone regardless of telco, bank relationship or smartphone model
- Auka is currently fundraising a pre-series B and has recently announced the first €1.5m of this round. Its series A was funded by VCs famous for Spotify, Klarna and iZettle. Local version of Settle app open for Croatian investors
Monday 26th November, 2018, Zagreb, Croatia:Nordic mobile payments pioneers, Auka, announced today that they will launch their new mobile payments app, Settle, in Croatia early 2019.
The announcement was made during a keynote presentation by Auka’s CEO Daniel Döderlein, about cashless societies, at the inaugural Shift Money conference in Zagreb.
Settle is the European mobile payments app, built on Auka’s proven and award-winning mobile payments platform – the same platform that was pivotal to the Nordic mobile payments revolution. Consumers and merchants can pre-register their interest here.
It will be available for download by all Croatians, regardless of their bank relationships or smartphone model, in early 2019. Its core functionality allows any person to quickly send and receive money, through a variety of funding source options, to any other person using just their phone number as an identifier. Other core functionality includes Settle for business, enabling any business to accept digital payments without relying on a card terminal.
Croatia is the first market where Auka has announced the launch of Settle. Auka’s CEO, Daniel Döderlein, explains this is because of several factors, but the primary reasons come down to the region’s market readiness.
“Croatia has always been an interesting market for us. It still has a large cash culture – consumers and business owners have a lot of payment pain points that Settle will solve. For example, our research clearly shows Croatians want a better way to gain control over their spending and splitting bills, while merchants struggle with cash handling and finding and connecting with new customers – including tourists.
“Further, we have also chosen Croatia for the same reason Auka is focused on rolling out Settle in other EU member states. New payments regulation in the form of PSD2 brings in open banking and will mean that banks must grant account access to licensed third-parties. Banks – and anyone with a large customer base, for that matter – want a way to gain better control over their payments channels before a third-party – such as Alipay – takes this control away,” says Döderlein.
Settle will conduct local, on-the-ground operations through a Croatian single purpose vehicle (SPV) company. Döderlein stresses that this is to ensure local adaptation of its award winning technology, provision of local support and to facilitate scale as Auka brings Settle to several EU markets next year. The majority of the proceeds of its growth go straight back to the region via the local company, its investors, partners and customers.
“Unlike international mobile payment apps, Settle will be run out of Europe and its local entities are the primary beneficiaries of its profits. The majority of revenue flows into the Croatian entity, ensuring we help create more jobs, wealth and drive innovation locally,” says Döderlein.
Auka, who is backed by investors such as Northzone and Entree Capital, recently announced its latest funding round, seeking €7M, where SpareBank 1 BV joined with of €1.5m. The company is in close talks with a number of potential Settle partners and will make its first local Settle partner announcements soon. They are actively seeking local investors as well as issuing and acquiring partners in the form of banks, telcos and other companies with solid distribution power.
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Note to editors:
Auka is sponsoring and exhibiting at Shift Money Conference in Zagreb Monday 26th and Tuesday 27th November. If you would like further information or to request an interview, please get in touch:
Lydia Lobb, Head of International PR at Auka, lydia@settle.eu, +44 7523215848
About Settle
Settle was founded in 2018 and comes from Oslo-based mobile payments pioneer, Auka. Settle makes it easier than ever for people and businesses to pay and get paid.
Like it or not, money plays a big role in everyone’s life. Yet paying and getting paid – i.e. using money, remains complicated. If you want to pay a friend money you owe them, send money to someone abroad or simply get lunch, you have to use different tools and methods and often pay hefty fees in the process. Not to mention time spent on worrying about security. Clearly “old money” needs to be replaced with something better. That’s why they created Settle – “new money”.
Auka have been making a name for themselves as leaders in mobile payment and commerce since 2010. From their headquarters in Norway they’ve spent almost a decade developing an award winning and world-class financial services platform. They developed the first mobile payments platform in the Nordics and launched the first mobile payments scheme in Norway, impacting the lives of millions of people and helping to fundamentally change the way people pay and get paid in Scandinavia.
The company’s appetite for change for the better and their mission to digitise money in order to make it universally useful for people and businesses everywhere drove the creation of Settle.
About Auka
Since 2010, Auka has been making a name for itself as leaders in mobile payments and e-commerce. From its headquarters in Norway, they’ve spent almost a decade developing an award-winning and world-class financial services platform.
Auka developed the first mobile payments platform in the Nordics (mCASH) and launched the first mobile payments solution in Norway, impacting the lives of millions of people and helping to fundamentally change the way people pay and get paid in Scandinavia.
Now Auka, with its mobile payment app Settle, is on a mission to make it easier than ever for people and businesses to pay and get paid all over Europe.
About Daniel Döderlein
With more than 20 years of entrepreneurial experience, top 200 European fintech influencer Daniel Döderlein is the CEO and founder of award-winning mobile payments company, Auka.
Sitting on the Google cloud advisory board, Daniel was the first to develop mobile payments technology in Scandinavia, the first to launch a mobile payment service in Norway (mCASH) and the first to create and run a regulated financial services platform on the public cloud.
After Norway’s second largest bank, Sparebank 1, acquired mCash for exclusive use in Norway, Daniel started Auka, which in turn has just announced Settle – mobile payments for Europe.
