San Marino. The 3 million euro seed investment closed by BKN301
BKN301, a San Marino fintech company that offers payment services and Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) functions, has finalized the first seed investment round worth 3 million euros.
“The shareholding structure”, reads a note, “is made up as follows: San Marino banking institutions (Banca Agricola Commerciale, Banca di San Marino and Cassa di Risparmio of the Republic of San Marino); the management of BKN301, made up of Stiven Muccioli, pioneer entrepreneur in the digital and fintech world, founder of several successful startups, including Ventis, Tippest and SM Capital, Federico Zambelli Hosmer, CBO, former General Manager of PayPal Italia, and Luca Bertozzi, financial director, former CFO of Ventis; Abalone Group, a Swiss company operating in the wealth management and consulting financial sector “.
Stiven Muccioli, CEO of BKN301, comments the outcome of the seed round: “First of all, I would like to thank the shareholders of BKN301 for their confidence in the development project of our company. Fintech is radically changing the banking and financial sector, with obvious benefits for the people who encounter the new services that arise from the meeting of two worlds. BKN301 wants to exploit the open and collaborative ecosystem logic that governs the sector, acting as a trait d’union between Western fintech companies and emerging countries: markets with very high growth and development potential, but with a scarce offer of digital and advanced solutions, despite the strong penetration of mobile devices which represent an element of social and cultural evolution “.
Today BKN301 “is the only payment institution in the Republic of San Marino and represents an important part of the country’s electronic payment system to which it offers currency issuance, acquisition and related digital solutions; it covers approximately 90% of the San Marino market “.
At an international level, BKN301 instead aims to “become an open-market and cross-border operator of reference in the open banking and digital payments sector, bringing its technological solutions to international markets, especially emerging ones (Africa, Middle East , Eastern Europe) “. Indeed, these are precisely a “manifestation of a strong potential for development: the low level of bancarization resulted in a consequent high literacy on technologies connected to payment systems”. Furthermore, in these territories, “there is already a growth in technological needs that is significantly higher than that of Western countries”.
The recent strategic partnership with the Swiss company Switchover AG, an international operator in the telecommunications sector, aims to “expand the geographical coverage of the digital services provided by BKN301”.
In this context, mobile wallets, loyalty programs, P2P exchanges, remittances and the issuance of payment cards, “are flexible and easily integrated, for financial institutions to transform digital services”. Furthermore, “they allow corporate businesses to broaden their range of action, increase profitability and improve strategic positioning by integrating digital payments into their service offering”.