What happened: Scandinavian bank Nordea has announced its partnership with expense management provider Mynt (Bloomberg). Nordea aims to enhance its SME banking offering through integrating corporate expense management features, and the partnership is scheduled to go live in 2026 across Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark.
My comment: What timing. Last week, I wrote about Pleo’s launch of Pleo Embedded, where it also aims to partner with banks. And now, one of the biggest Scandinavian banks is partnering with Mynt. Mynt might not be as well-known outside of Scandinavia as its competitor Pleo; however, Mynt has been focusing on partnerships for some time. Fortnox and Visma, both major providers of accounting and business software, have already integrated Mynt; however, a bank has not yet been among their partners.
The trend of banks preferring to partner with expense management providers is also evident in other markets. German expense management provider Pliant has a similar partnership with Commerzbank and seems to be growing its focus on bank partnerships. Personally, it took me some time to understand that banks are willing to partner in the area of expense management and cards. Initially, this seemed like an area where banks prefer to keep it in-house. However, I assume this was the case only until some years ago. With the continuous improvement of these digital products by standalone players and their success in the market, a shift in the mindset of banks has occurred.
