Denmark-headquartered payment service provider Nets is opening a tech hub in Finland to take advantage of the county’s deep skills pool.
The European paytech company, part of the Nexi Group, is recruiting more than 50 software engineers to work on digital payments at the centre in Espoo.
Nexi Digital Finland, as the hub is known, will invest in technologies and innovation including the cloud.
“Finland is one of the most digitised societies in the world, with Finnish payment technology expertise leading the way in Europe,” said Alexandre Bove, Nexi’s head of digital. “We want to harness this talent for the entire Nexi Group.”
Bove added that the hub will be an important part of the company’s growth across Europe.
According to Ossi Korhonen, director of Nexi Digital Finland, the organisation expects to recruit more tech experts. “We will double the number of our application developers in Finland and offer them the opportunity to drive world-leading payment technology forward,” he said.
“Nexi Digital Finland creates a strong innovation platform to the benefit of our customers across Europe.”
Finland and the wider Nordic region is a hotbed of digital talent, with a strong focus on digitising financial services. The region is home to many big names in the fintech sector, and has a population of people open to trying out new digital services such as digital banking.
Nordic countries have been leading the charge towards a cashless society. Nordic advances with digital currencies are being made against a backdrop of cash usage across Scandinavia falling to below 10%.
Super apps
According to a study from Juniper Research published last year, more than five billion people will be using digital wallets by 2026, as “super apps” drive adoption in developing countries, according to a global study.
The next four years will see the number of global users hit 5.2 billion, compared with 3.4 billion in 2022, said Juniper.
The global adoption of digital payments technologies received an unexpected boost in demand during the Covid-19 pandemic, when governments set rules to prevent physical contact and consumers were forced to use digital services.
