At the turning point: 'NEO Finance' gears up for the next leap in fintech

This summer, Lithuania’s fintech market was stirred by news that Juozas Kaminskas has taken the helm of NEO Finance. At first glance, it may not seem unusual – a well-known industry expert becomes the head of a fintech group that includes Neopay (payment services), Paskolų klubas (peer-to-peer lending), and FinoMark (crowdfunding). Good leaders are always in demand. However, Kaminskas previously led the Lithuanian branch of the global payments giant Nuvei, so this move might have seemed somewhat bold to many observers.

In an interview with The Baltic Times Magazine, Kaminskas smiled and admitted that this was one of those moments when a person leaves a stable, comfortable position to dive into uncertainty and new experiences. “To me, fintech means speed. I wanted to get back on track, leaving the large corporate environment for a smaller, more ambitious team, where the key factor is the wind in your hair,” he said.

But not just that, right? The fintech market has been anticipating major shifts for some time. Is this preparation for a leap forward?

I believe the most exciting years for fintech are still ahead of us, but the changes are already tangible. Across Europe, we’re witnessing the rise of account-to-account payment solutions, and the BNPL (Buy Now, Pay Later) model is finally finding its place in retail. All this is reshaping the traditional financial services landscape – and that’s without even mentioning the vast potential of AI in payment technologies.

I remember a decade ago working at Western Union, when we were just starting to digitize money transfers – moving from cash pick-ups at agent locations to direct digital transfers and wallet accounts. Only ten years have passed, yet today it feels like ancient history – both in terms of service and technology.

Fintech, at its core, was born from the desire to make seemingly ordinary actions faster and simpler. Banks, as reliable as they are, tend to be conservative and slow to adapt. They struggled to embrace the key attributes of the internet era – accessibility and speed. Payments used to be painfully slow and complex, but once the PSD2 directive took effect in Europe, it opened access to payments, and tech companies quickly redefined what “fast financial services” really meant, as the Open Banking era kicked in.

Another essential factor is trust. “NEO Finance” is a rather untypical Lithuanian fintech – it remains the only Lithuanian Fintech company listed on NASDAQ Baltic First North. That demonstrates not just ambition, but also a commitment to transparency and building long-term trust among clients and investors. 

NEO Finance bridges two major pillars of the financial ecosystem – payment services and financing platforms. Managing both allows us to respond to market shifts faster and more precisely, particularly within the SME segment.

And what about geographical expansion?

Definitely. One of our key goals is expansion into foreign markets. Our business model was built on the growth potential of Lithuania and the Baltic region, but today, this model has outgrown its initial framework. The domestic market is simply too small to support further scale across Europe.

Lithuanian users are curious and quick to adopt new payment technologies, which allowed us to pilot and test various innovations – from QR code payments and payment links to split payments and improved client risk management tools. All of this opens up new ways to process payments and expand geographically, as these technologies spread at different speeds across markets.

Today, we already interact with banks in 21 countries, and if we count all payment methods, we’re covering most of Europe, and a few countries beyond. Still, we must admit that we’ve never had a physical presence abroad – until now.

This autumn, we began our sales operations into Poland, a country whose GDP recently surpassed the €1 trillion mark, with a far larger and more diverse market. While Lithuania’s annual e-commerce turnover is around €4 billion, in Poland it’s nearly ten times higher – €35 billion.

In Poland, we already have partners, a strategy, and are ready to speed up the operations. Looking further ahead, we see Poland as a springboard for regional expansion. Further into CEE region, we’re particularly interested in Bulgaria and Romania, where the payments market is rapidly evolving. While, in Spain, we are already working with multiple banking partners and are exploring opportunities for deeper cooperation.

We move fast, but without compromising on our core principle – security and reliability.

And the Baltic countries?

Historically, we can call this region our home market. We are working with a group of partners in both Latvia and Estonia. We have different models throughout the years. Experience has shown that the local team model works by far the best, so we’re now looking to rebuild it in both countries.

Who should pay attention when you talk about expansion? Who is the “NEO Finance” client?

Our key business segments are e-commerce, financial institutions, and igaming. We enable them to quickly access many different payment methods through our Neopay Payment Gateway, or to use our Neopay Open Banking infrastructure rails to process these payments directly. On top, we are moving forward into business financing solutions – BNPL financing model. We launched it in Lithuania, and Latvia and Estonia are on the horizon. This solution will not be limited to online stores – we enable it in physical retail locations too.

We are also expanding our distribution channels. Together with our partners, we’re deploying payment terminals at retail points and taking our first steps toward self-service terminals, where users will be able both to make payments and withdraw cash. A true omni-channel approach to payments becomes increasingly crucial for retail and e-commerce business synergies.  

Analysts often talk about global trends in terms of “uncertainty” and “politics.” Does that worry you?

Honestly, the rules in financial sector were changing and perhaps are to be changing very rapidly in years ahead of us, and all these changes require a will from politics, businesses and users to work. However, I find what’s happening in the last few years – it is a high-speed rollercoaster. 

In the early days of fintech, there was almost an artificial tension between banks and fintechs. But today, we clearly see that banks have embraced change – they value the opportunities that fintech technologies bring and are becoming active users of these innovations themselves.

Yes, fintech has taken over some functions that banks could have handled. But by being faster and more agile, we’re doing it better – and continuously discovering new niches within the payments space. Banks remain part of the value chain, and today we have a mutual understanding of how we complement one another and jointly increase value for consumers.

I believe fintech has created healthy, organic competition, taking on risks and laying the foundation for shared growth. It’s an ecosystem from which even policymakers could learn a lot.