• Auka named fastest growing fintech company in Deloitte Fast 500 EMEA. Won fastest growing company overall in Norway
• The company can help any retail bank prepare for regulatory changes, such as those outlined in the second payment services directive (PSD2), which will see them having to open their APIs come January 2018

Auka, who work with retail banks to help them best prepare for digital transformation, were last night recognised as the fastest-growing fintech company at Deloitte’s annual Fast 500 for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

Taking out the top place for the fastest growing company in Norway a fortnight ago and fourth overall for the entire EMEA competition last night, Auka comes in ahead of other disruptive fintech companies such as GoCardless (10th), iZettle (28th), and Wikifolio Financial Technologies AG (9th).

When Daniel Döderlein, Auka CEO and founder, established mCash, the first fully regulated financial services company to operate entirely from Google’s cloud platform; he saw it as a game-change for retail banks but was initially dismissed due to a lack of belief by big banks of the product’s necessity.

“We went to market anyway and quickly proved to those banks that their customers did, in fact, want an easier way to pay and be paid using their mobile phones, amassing more than 200,000 users in a year – a huge effort for a start-up with a minimal marketing budget,” Döderlein says.

Whilst Norway’s largest bank, DNB, launched their own mobile payments to market, the country’s second-largest bank, SpareBank 1, re-engaged. At the end of 2015, SpareBank 1 took over the exclusive naming and user rights for mCash in Norway.

Daniel and his team subsequently founded Auka, which provides payment solutions at scale to any retail bank anywhere in the world, and  advises banks how they can best prepare for digital transformation and inevitable third-party disruption. They can also go on to create and integrate a fully regulated, PSD2-ready and cloud-hosted white-labeled full payments stack within a matter of months.

Daniel says that the key factor for Auka’s success has been the ability to build new, clever technology on top of older banking infrastructure – enabling banks to enter a market quickly without concerns over legacy IT.

“One of the fundamental reasons Auka is where it is today is certainly the fact that we recognised an opportunity very early on and then took swift action. What started as a fairly naive and simple idea back in 2006, became a company in 2010 and was the first to launch mobile payments in Norway.

“I’m humbled by the many thousands of hours everyone involved has put behind my dream – this award is really the result and officially recognises Auka as a true fintech leader in EMEA. With a refined vision to become the backbone of modern banking, we will continue to make it easy for people to pay and get paid, everywhere across the globe, fueled by innovative technology, knowledge and excellence,”Döderlein says.