A subsidiary of Vinted, an online second-hand fashion marketplace that became Lithuania’s first unicorn in 2019, has received an e-money institution license from the Bank of Lithuania.
The license was granted to the company last Monday, according to Simonas Krėpšta, a member of the central bank’s board.
“We can reveal that Lithuania’s first unicorn Vinted is entering the world of finance. The Bank of Lithuania has issued an electronic money institution license to a subsidiary of Vinted,” he told reporters on Friday.
The central bank said in a press release that the license authorises the holder to issue electronic money and provide payment services.
The company intends to provide payment services to the Vinted platform’s customers across Europe, it said.
According to Krėpšta, the Vinted subsidiary is likely to have tens of millions of customers in the electronic money segment.
The official said that Lithuanian-licensed payment institutions currently serve about 25 million customers across the EU, accounting for about ten percent of the bloc’s adult population.
“It is highly likely that this number could nearly double in a relatively short time,” he added.
Vinted trimmed its pre-tax loss by 62.3 percent last year, compared with 2021, to 42.9 million euros as revenue surged by 51 percent to 371.4 million euros.
The company says 2022 was a year of significant changes for it, including the launch of the Vinted Go delivery business and the completion of the acquisition of the second-hand online shop Rebelle.
Vinted entered three new markets – Sweden, Hungary and Slovakia – last year. The company started operations in Romania in May this year and was providing services in 19 countries in Europe and North America in June. It is also planning to expand in Denmark and Finland this year.
Vinted companies employ more than 1,800 people. It became Lithuania’s first unicorn, a startup with a valuation of over 1 billion US dollars, in 2019.
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