“Can an Estonian bank's UK subsidiary become the default BaaS and payments rail for European fintechs while running a retail bank on the side?”
LHV Pank was founded in 1999 in Estonia and spun its UK operation out as LHV Bank Limited, obtaining a full UK banking licence in 2023 to become the first new UK bank in four years. The UK entity has positioned itself as one of Europe's largest Banking-as-a-Service providers, serving 200+ fintechs including Wise, Coinbase and Trustly and reportedly facilitating 8% of all European real-time payments. In 2025 it migrated to Tuum's cloud-native core banking platform to scale its BaaS and embedded-finance offering while also running a retail bank in the UK.
LHV Bank discloses LHV Bank Limited (in-house) as its banking provider, according to the Embedded Finance Index 2026.
LHV Bank does not disclose a bank charter of its own; its banking services are provided through LHV Bank Limited (in-house).
LHV Bank processes payments through LHV Connect (self-operated). Disclosed money-movement rails: RTP, SWIFT, SEPA Instant, SEPA and Faster Payments.
LHV Bank's cards run on Mastercard.
LHV Bank uses Veriff for KYC and identity verification.
LHV Bank's lending and capital products are provided by LHV Pank (in-house).
LHV Bank runs its ledger on Tuum.
LHV Bank connects to bank accounts through Salt Edge.
LHV Bank uses LHV Connect (self-operated) for FX and cross-border payouts.
The Embedded Finance Index 2026 maps 9 layers in LHV Bank's stack: Payments / PSP (LHV Connect (self-operated)); Money movement (RTP, SWIFT, SEPA Instant, SEPA and 1 other); Banking / BaaS (LHV Bank Limited (in-house)); Card network (Mastercard); Ledger (Tuum); Lending (LHV Pank (in-house), Working capital loan, Sustainable development loan, Commercial term loans and 2 others); Open banking (Salt Edge); KYC (Veriff); FX & payouts (LHV Connect (self-operated)).
LHV Bank is founded in 2012 and headquartered in London, United Kingdom.
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