UniCredit has agreed to acquire the entire share capital of Vodeno and Aion Bank in a deal worth approximately €370m. Based in Poland, Vodeno is a fintech company providing banking-as-a-service (BaaS) solution. Aion Bank, on the other hand, is a subscription-only digital bank.
Both the firms are backed by private equity firm Warburg Pincus and have a partnership since 2022 for offering embedded banking to companies across Europe.
Vodeno and Aion Bank bring together a new, scalable, and flexible cloud-based platform with banking services based on the latter’s European Central Bank (ECB) licence. This enables both financial and non-financial companies across Europe to access fully end-to-end BaaS.
Aion Bank and Vodeno embed financial solutions directly into the customer journeys of retailers, e-commerce marketplaces, fintechs, financial technology providers and banks.
The solutions include accounts, deposits, lending as well as payment propositions. Built with application programming interface (API)-based and smart contracts technology, Vodeno’s cloud platform integrates the processes and procedures of a fully-fledged bank.
Through the twin acquisition, UniCredit aims to own a next-generation core banking technology and advance its in-house technological expertise.
Besides, the Italian bank will secure a separate innovation and testing hub to innovate, develop, and test new solutions and functionalities.
UniCredit will also enhance embedded finance offering and boost the proposition for individuals and small medium sized enterprises (SMEs) with Vodeno and Aion Bank.
As part of the deal, 200 engineers, developers and data scientists will join UniCredit. UniCredit CEO Andrea Orcel said: “This investment enables us to leverage Vodeno’s technology and talent to further develop their proprietary technology using it as a sandbox to develop, test and innovate for the benefit of our broader group.
“The combination of Aion Bank with the integrated technology provides the route to enter targeted client segments and entire markets across Europe, providing additional opportunities to attractively deploy our excess capital.”
Subject to regulatory approvals, the transaction is expected to be completed in Q4 2024. Last month, the European Commission (EC) approved UniCredit’s previously announced acquisition of Alpha Bank Romania, the Romanian subsidiary of Alpha Bank.