Fintech Trailblazer & Tink CEO Daniel Kjellén talks about startups

As CEO and co-founder of Tink, Europe’s leading open banking platform, Daniel Kjellén and his co-founder Frederik Hegberg have now seen their ideas connect to more than 3,400 banks – and reach 250 million customers.

He comes from Sweden, the world’s most cashless society, and it is hardly surprising that Daniel Kjellén has made a mark through Europe’s open banking scene. But the enterprising former investment banker who launched his first company in 2001 is modest about his achievements, saying the scale and success of Tink has exceeded his expectations.

Speaking to Fintech Magazine, he told us: “I think part of being an entrepreneur is being a bit naïve and over-optimistic about speed and impact. While we always felt that ‘it’s [Tink] is going to be so much bigger, it’s going to grow so much more, etc.’, looking back 10 years, it’s just amazing that we played a role in transforming how people look at banking.”

Transforming the banking space

But Tink has not only changed the perspective of the marketplace. Fintech has also built a layer of infrastructure that has enabled a new generation of financial services, such as PayPal and others, to thrive and gain consumer trust and adoption. It has been a transformative force in the industry.

Despite this success, being the CEO and co-founder of a world-leading fintech was not at the top of Kjellén’s agenda when he first started out.

He launched his very first startup in 2001. Prodocon AB was a domain name company that he ran for eight years until the company was acquired and absorbed by NetNames Group.

When you describe the time with the start-up, you get the impression that Kjellén is an enthusiastic entrepreneur, who leads with ideas and handles the nuts and bolts later. Talking about the early years, he says: “My plan was to go to university when I was only in my 20s. I accidentally founded a company dealing in the corporate domain of management and started working there, [and] was CEO for eight years.”

For a while, the dynamism and excitement of running your own company was an intense experience that delayed any further plans for further education. But soon, with a workforce of 20 employees, he felt compelled to go to university and choose finance and business for his degree. “I just felt that if I was ever going to have a ‘proper job’ I would also have to go to university. After four years [of running the business].”

A degree in finance and business

Kjellén worked at Prodocon during the day and studied at night. It was a juggling act that he kept up for another four years. “No one in my class even knew I was studying the course because I did most of the work in the evenings.”

The university course provided some social benefits as it resulted in Kjellén meeting his wife. “I met my wife there in my class, so I think that’s the biggest achievement,” he recalls.

Shortly after graduating, Prodocon was bought out, and in 2008, at the height of the financial crash, Kjellén joined the Investment Banking Division of Carnegie – the leading investment bank in the Nordics at the time, where he remained until 2012.

“It should have been one of those ‘make mother proud’ jobs”. It ended up not making mother so proud because it was taken over, he says of the position.

But the role ended up being a sharp learning curve in the financial world as Kjellén embraced investment banking from a beginner’s perspective. “The bank went bankrupt as a result of the financial crisis … And I think for me those four years were extremely educational because as a junior investment banker you work around the clock. You almost have to be a secretary, with everything in order, papers in order, Excel sheet in order. And as a small contractor, it wasn’t a top priority before. It was completely uncharted waters for me, but also extremely rewarding.”

The launch pad for Tink

Now the financial technology scene in Sweden was in strong progress. Contactless payments were common and the market was ripe for disruption. Kjellén’s entrepreneurial drive led him to a new place of inspiration – and his co-founder, Frederik Hedberg.

He believes the timing was crucial in establishing the business because innovation was beginning to mature the industry. “I think that timing in entrepreneurship is probably underrated. The stars were definitely aligned for someone to disrupt payments and banking out of the Nordic countries for a number of reasons. Being cashless was one of them – and the fact that mobile banking APIs were just starting to appear in the Nordics.”

A tech-savvy population, an appetite for innovation and a functioning ecosystem in terms of funding were all aligned. “It was the right time, and a perfect starting point to build the kind of business we envisioned,” he says.

Both Kjellén and Hedberg had cut their teeth in the investment banking area. Hedberg had also previously built a large technology company and had experience working for a hedge fund in San Francisco.

“We had a head start and a keen interest in both technology and finance. We realized personal finance and the payments industry was still very much under the control of large traditional universal banks. We wanted to become entrepreneurs again, and were looking for a place open to disruption where we could have a meaningful impact, says Kjellén.

Since then, the company has changed in size and offering. To begin with, Tink addressed the missing pieces in retail and unmet consumer needs. But both co-founders knew the industry was becoming increasingly data-driven, so they turned their attention to technology, creating the building blocks of future banking, with unified APIs that collected data, accessed accounts and handled payments.

Tink enters into partnership with Visa

There were also many offers of cooperation, but until recently the co-founders held on. In 2022, however, Tink was acquired by Visa for $1.75 billion and has since skyrocketed.

“We have been through ups and downs during these 10 years. We have had people come and knock on our doors to make acquisitions or the like.

He continues, “We’ve always evaluated this through the same lens, ‘is this going to increase the likelihood of us winning and bringing open banking globally?’ And the answer in the past was ‘No.'” And with Visa it was different. Why? believed a lot in this company and wanted to keep it independent, but also gave us muscle and reliability and the network that Visa has globally. I think that’s exactly what we got.”

Kjellén adds: “We still operate as a small, agile company. But we can take a long-term approach. We spend a lot less time trying to explain who we are, that we can be trusted, that we’re going to be around 10 years from now, etc.. Instead, people realize, “Well, you’re part of Visa, ” and we can cross off. Now we can focus on what we can do together. I think it’s a fantastic opportunity.”