BT Investments, a company of Banca Transilvania Financial Group, has just announced their investment in Timesafe, the developer of Pago payment application, the bank reported. This funding marks the group’s first investment in a startup.
According to the Bank’s General Manager, Oemer Tetik this is the group’ step further in showing their support to the entrepreneurs, but a statement too, to further encourage the process of digitization.
“This is another step BT does to support entrepreneurs and encourage digitization”, said Tetik.
Founded in 2016 Pago is the first mobile app in Romania for managing and paying all utility bills in one place. The application is developed in collaboration with Mastercard Romania and Banca Transilvania. That said, it is not surprising that the app’s co-founder, Adrian Cighi used to work as an Investment Analyst in Banca Transilvania (from 2007 to 2010).
The Pago app was launched at Future Banking 2017, an event dedicated to digitization and innovation in the banking and payment area. For the moment the usage of the app is free of charge and allows a payment through any bank card. The startup’s co-founder, Adrian Cighi has initially invested more than EUR 100,000 in the app and plans to reach 50,000 users by the end of this year, Romanian-insider reported. Hence, the investment made by the second largest bank in Romania, is seen as a step forward in Pago’s co-founder’s decision to reach this goal.
“The partnership with Banca Transilvania will allow us to accelerate the development of the Pago application. The investment will be used especially for technical product developments and the addition of new suppliers and new types of payments to the benefit of our users,” said Cighi.
Banca Transilvania is the largest banking institution with a majority Romanian private capital. The Bank’s main activities are organized in three main business lines: individuals, SMEs and Corporate. In 2016 the Bank was selected as “The Best Bank in Romania” by the international magazine Euromoney.
Timesafe, on the other hand, is the developer of the Pago payment application used for managing and paying utility bills, prepaid card downloading, and pay-per-plane payments.