Romania’s BT Investments buys into fin-tech startup Timesafe

BUCHAREST (Romania),  SeeNews – BT Investments, a company owned by Romania’s Banca Transilvania Financial Group, said on Tuesday it has become a shareholder in local fin-tech startup Timesafe.

Timesafe is the developer of the Pago payment application used for managing and paying utility bills, prepaid card downloading, and pay-per-plane payments.

The application is being developed in partnership with Banca Transilvania and Mastercard, the financial group said in a press release.

“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,” Pago co-founder Adrian Cighi said.

This is Banca Transilvania Group’s first investment in a startup.

“This is another step BT does to support entrepreneurs and encourage digitization,” Banca Transilvania general manager Oemer Tetik said.

Besides BT Investments, Banca Transilvania Group includes lender Banca Transilvania [BSE: TLV], BT Asset Management, BT Direct, BT Leasing, BT Securities, Factoring company, BT Finop Leasing and Medicredit.

Banca Transilvania’s shares were traded 0.23% lower at 2.1750 lei ($0.55/0.47 euro) on the Bucharest Stock Exchange as at 1419 CET on Tuesday.