This article is a part of Poland Unpacked. Weekly intelligence for decision-makers
High labor costs, legacy IT systems in the West and new regulations have created ideal conditions for a Polish fintech. After successfully pivoting toward automated customer verification, TransactionLink now serves around 100 international institutions. Its challenge is to win over Poland’s more conservative banks.
It was September 2019. European banks opened up their API interfaces, and the market became captivated by the promise of open banking. Talk was of a revolution that would give fintechs a route to taking customers away from banks. Instead, it quickly became clear that simply accessing data had turned into a commoditized service available for free, making it difficult to build a profitable business around it. That was when the founders of TransactionLink realized they needed to escape the trap as quickly as possible. One of their customers helped push the company in an entirely different direction.
TransactionLink started out as an open-banking provider
The idea for the company emerged in the fall of 2019, shortly after banks were required to open up their APIs under the EU’s revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2). Operations began in May 2021. Founded by Mateusz Pniewski, formerly a project manager at Visa and an analyst at German fintech N26, the company became Poland’s fifth provider of what is known as an account information service (AISP).
The business model was fairly straightforward: offer companies, particularly fintechs, access to customers’ financial data from different banks. This would allow them to build new services, chiefly account aggregation in one place, income verification for financing purposes, and easier household-budget management.
“The market quickly realized, however, that it was difficult to make money from this. Companies did not see the value provided by entities aggregating services based on AIS [account information service – ed.], which led to a reliance on low margins. Some companies shut down, while others changed their business focus. We, too, faced a choice about what to do next,” says the founder and current CEO of TransactionLink.
It ultimately pivoted to customer verification
The problem was not confined to Poland but affected much of Europe. Take Yolt, for example, which was part of ING and discontinued its services in 2023. Britain’s Bud Financial pivoted toward AI, while another British player, Money Dashboard, shut down its retail offering and focused exclusively on business customers. Poland’s Kontomatik also now focuses on B2B services. It continues to use AIS as well as PIS, which enables payments to be initiated on behalf of customers.
For TransactionLink, one of its customers came to the rescue. In 2023, the fintech therefore changed its priorities and took a different path from the one it had originally intended. It did not abandon AIS altogether, but today it provides the service only in Poland.
The company has specialized in automated customer verification and monitoring. Its platform regularly checks a total of 150 registers, looking for information on company representatives, shareholders and ultimate beneficial owners, among other things. It flags any changes and presents them for an analyst to verify.
Expert's perspective
Open banking did not spark a revolution, but the market is using PSD2 services
Let us not forget that expectations were set extraordinarily high, including predictions of a “revolution” in digital finance. Although the revolution never came, the market uses open banking in its day-to-day operations. Of the two services – payment initiation services (PIS) and account information services (AIS) – the former has proved more popular. A significant share of payment processors have replaced traditional pay-by-link transfers with payments initiated through PSD2 APIs. AIS, meanwhile, continues to be widely used, including in creditworthiness assessments and to give customers a view of accounts held with another bank through online banking.
Two draft regulations on the horizon could, however, give open banking a new lease of life. The first is the Payment Services Regulation (PSR), which seeks to remove some of the existing barriers and clarify disputed issues, including access to the account holder’s name, while giving users a dashboard for managing their consents.
The second is the Financial Data Access Regulation (FIDA), which was intended to introduce much more far-reaching changes by expanding open banking into open finance. The obligation to provide APIs and share customer data would cover a much broader range of financial institutions, including insurers and brokerage firms. The final shape of the rules could, however, differ substantially from what the market expects – if the regulation is adopted at all.
Open banking is here to stay, and probably will be for a long time. But we will have to wait a little longer for the revolution.
Demand is being driven by anti-money-laundering rules
This allows companies to automate a process that is often handled manually, saving both time and money. Mateusz Pniewski gives the example of one of the fintech’s customers, a payment institution that can now do in a dozen minutes what previously required its compliance team to spend many hours on each new business customer.
“When companies try to acquire a customer, they collect a range of information about them, but ongoing monitoring is just as important and presents an enormous challenge. We help automate that process,” the executive explains.
Regulation is driving demand for the service. It requires thorough customer verification, primarily to assess the risk of money laundering (AML). Another package of rules – the Anti-Money Laundering Regulation (AMLR) – will come into force in 2027. Industries that have so far built only limited verification processes, known as KYB (Know Your Business), have less than a year to develop new procedures. TransactionLink sees opportunities in these gaps.
Today, the company serves fintechs and payment firms, among others
Today, TransactionLink serves around 100 companies. Its customers include Greece’s Viva, a bank operating across Europe; British cryptocurrency payments provider BCB Group; and Dutch payments company Klearly. There are also companies familiar in Poland, including payment processors Fiserv and Paytel, as well as Polish-founded fintech Zen, which recently acquired a Ukrainian bank.
“We have become an international company, operating in 28 markets – in virtually the entire European Union, as well as Switzerland and the US. Paradoxically, it is easier for us to enter these markets than to break into Poland,” our interlocutor admits.
The company is headquartered in the UK. This is also where the largest share of TransactionLink’s revenue comes from, while international markets now account for the majority of the fintech’s overall results.
The company is rapidly growing revenue abroad
Mateusz Pniewski does not want to disclose detailed financial figures, saying only that the farther west in Europe the company goes, the easier it is to achieve higher margins. There are two reasons. First, automation competes with human labor, and the higher the cost of that labor, the greater the potential savings. Second, Western Europe has more banks that have been operating for decades. Their IT systems are older, creating greater demand for automation.
“We solve operational problems for large institutions dealing with overwhelming volumes. So we target large markets with sizeable banks, fintechs and payment institutions serving millions of customers. But we see that while foreign companies are increasingly asking themselves how much their scale is costing them, Polish institutions tend to approach discussions with us much more from a regulatory perspective and pursue defensive strategies,” our interlocutor says.
According to Poland’s National Court Register (KRS), the company generated PLN 5.1 million (EUR 1.2 million) in revenue at the end of 2025, up 60% from the previous year. As recently as 2023, revenue stood at just PLN 806,000 (EUR 190,000).
Winning over Polish banks is now the priority
As Mateusz Pniewski admits, gaining a stronger foothold with Polish banks is his priority for the coming months. For now, despite having business case studies from abroad, he finds it difficult to get TransactionLink’s offering through the door at Polish banks.
“We can offer Polish banks the same thing we offer large institutions in the West. It takes routine, manual work off analysts’ desks, allowing them to focus on cases that genuinely require their attention. Instead of building a solution themselves, banks can use a tool that is already operating in more than a dozen markets. It would also allow us to establish a stronger position in the sector and diversify our business,” the executive explains.
This is somewhat at odds with the strategy TransactionLink pursued in its early startup days. The company now has sufficient scale and, rather than entering yet more markets, prefers to deepen its presence in the 28 countries where it already operates.
For now, it has no plans to tap investors for more capital. It has done so twice before, most recently almost three years ago, in October 2023. The fintech then raised USD 5.3 million (EUR 4.9 million) from investors including White Star Capital and Target Global.
Key Takeaways
- The pivot saved the business. Commercializing access to customers’ financial data (AISP) proved to be a dead end because of low margins in the market. On a customer’s advice, TransactionLink changed its business model in 2023, focusing instead on automated verification of business customers. Today, its platform monitors 150 registers, cutting analysis time from several hours to a dozen or so minutes.
- Demand for automation is set to surge, partly because of the EU’s AMLR, which takes effect in 2027 and will require KYB procedures in new industries. The requirement for continuous customer monitoring, combined with overwhelming data volumes and the high cost of analysts’ time, means technology is becoming the only way for institutions to scale.
- Foreign markets are ahead of Poland. TransactionLink has established a presence in 28 markets and serves around 100 companies, including Greece’s Viva Bank and Fiserv. Its UK headquarters generates the largest share of the company’s revenue. Polish banks, with their defensive approach, are a tougher target. Winning them over is nevertheless the company’s priority for the coming months.