Fabrick, part of the Banca Sella Group and current 100% shareholder of the open banking platform HYPE, has sold a 50% stake of the platform to the Italian digital bank illimity in a deal worth around €140 million.
The deal is unique and the first of its kind in the Italian banking landscape, with the two banks joining forces to invest in the Fintech sector and create the largest open banking platform in the country.
While HYPE is already the leading Fintech in the Italian sector of innovative financial services provided by non-bank Fintech, the aim of this joint venture is to increase the ambitions of the project and the simultaneous acceleration of the growth of the platform, targeting to serve 3 million customers.
“The digital financial services world is evolving fast,” said Corrado Passera, Founder and CEO of illimity. “Technology, user experience, economies of scale and, above all, how quickly they can be achieved, are crucial success factors. Just as in the direct digital banking segment, illimity has strongly innovated and will continue to do so by expanding its field of action, in the non-banking segment we were delighted to take this opportunity to partner with the Italian leader to become a true industry benchmark. We are already closely linked to the Sella Group by technological collaboration and we are particularly pleased that it has decided to consolidate a long-term relationship between us also through an investment in illimity share capital.”
The deal also aims to accelerate the development of illimity in the industry and grow its potential in “light” banking services, as well as advance the plans of Fabrick as an enabler of open banking and new generation Fintech projects.
Pietro Sella, CEO of the Sella Group and Chairman of Fabrick said; “We have always affirmed and believe that Open Innovation and Open Banking are the path to innovate financial services; with this agreement we attest the ability and effectiveness of the new rules of the game with the aim of creating with illimity the first Italian challenger bank. The digital transformation is producing a strong disruption in the financial sector and HYPE was born in this context and the agreement that we present today represents a new stage in an extraordinary path of open innovation with operating model that has proved its effectiveness reaching 1.3 million customers. Hype has thus turned into a great project, with ambitious goals, and to reach these goals we started the search for the right partner.
“The agreement also confirms the value of the Fabrick project as an accelerator, enabler and developer of the fintech ecosystem and we are proud and honoured to welcome the equally extraordinary illimity project among our significant shareholdings and to be able to contribute to its success.”
