Leadership

Co-Founders:

• Mihaela Georgescu
• Ana-Maria Georgescu
• Alexandru Cociu
• Andrei Dumitru

Short Introduction

Smart Fintech is a Romanian regulated open-banking provider offering account-to-account payment initiation, bank-account data aggregation and real-time cash-management solutions for companies and digital platforms.

About the Company

Founded in 2019, Smart Fintech develops open-banking infrastructure that connects companies and software platforms directly to participating banks through APIs. The company became Romania’s first locally authorised open-banking Third-Party Provider and received authorisation from the National Bank of Romania for both payment-initiation and account-information services in 2021.

Its technology allows businesses to initiate account-to-account payments, collect money directly into their bank accounts and retrieve standardised account, balance and transaction information with the account holder’s consent. These capabilities can be integrated into ERP, accounting, invoicing, lending, e-commerce, investment, insurance, utility and personal-finance applications.

Smart Fintech’s two core services are SmartPay and Smart Accounts. SmartPay enables online and corporate payments to be initiated directly from a bank account, without using a card or manually transferring payment files between business software and online-banking applications. Smart Accounts provides authorised access to bank-account information, helping companies automate transaction retrieval, reconciliation, cash-flow monitoring and financial analysis.

The company also offers Smart Accounts App, a SaaS treasury-management platform that gives finance teams a consolidated view of balances, transactions, collections and payments across multiple banks. According to Smart Fintech, its services connect to 13 leading Romanian banks and cover more than 95% of the local banking market.

Sources: Smart Fintech website, Smart Fintech company profile, authorisation announcement

Products & Services

• SmartPay — a regulated payment-initiation service enabling account-to-account payments directly from the payer’s bank account.
• Pay by Bank for e-commerce — an alternative online checkout method through which customers select their bank, authenticate with it and authorise the payment without entering card details.
• Corporate Payments — initiation of supplier, salary, tax and other third-party payments directly from ERP, accounting or financial-management software.
• Multiple-Payment Initiation — preparation of payments to multiple beneficiaries within a business application, followed by authorisation through the customer’s bank.
• SmartPay Console — monitoring and management of payments and collections initiated through SmartPay.
• Smart Accounts — regulated access to bank-account balances and transaction data, delivered through a standardised API.
• Account Aggregation — consolidation of information from several accounts and banks within a single application.
• Automated Reconciliation — automatic matching of bank transactions with invoices, collections, expenses or other accounting records.
• Smart Accounts App — a SaaS cash- and treasury-management platform offering consolidated financial visibility and reporting.
• Financial Data for Lending — consent-based delivery of bank transactions and account turnover to lenders for faster affordability and creditworthiness assessment.
• API Integration and Technical Support — integration of SmartPay and Smart Accounts into third-party platforms, accompanied by documentation, testing environments and local implementation assistance.

Licences & Regulatory Status

Smart Fintech S.R.L., unique identification code 41251980, is a payment institution authorised and supervised by the National Bank of Romania.

The company is listed in the Register of Payment Institutions and Specialised Account Information Service Providers under authorisation number:

IP-RO-0011 / 02.04.2021

Its regulatory permissions cover the two principal open-banking services defined under PSD2:

• Payment Initiation Services (PIS/PISP) — allowing Smart Fintech to initiate a payment from the user’s bank account after the user authenticates and authorises the transaction with the bank.
• Account Information Services (AIS/AISP) — allowing it to retrieve and aggregate account, balance and transaction information with the account holder’s explicit consent.

Smart Fintech does not hold customer deposits and does not replace the customer’s bank. The bank continues to hold the account, authenticate the customer and execute the payment; Smart Fintech provides the regulated connection and initiation or information service.

Its activity is governed in Romania primarily by Law no. 209/2019 on payment services, the applicable National Bank of Romania regulations and the European PSD2 framework. Processing of account and personal information is also subject to the GDPR.

The National Bank of Romania confirmed Smart Fintech’s authorisation as a payment institution in its 2021 Annual Report. The company’s current authorisation details are also displayed on its official website.