March 20 (SeeNews) - Estonian fintech company Fitek Group has acquired a 50% stake in the capital of Serbian e-invoicing and digital printing solutions developer New Image as part of expansion into Southeast Europe (SEE), Fitek said
With the transaction, the products of Fitek will become available in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, plus the export markets of Montenegro, Macedonia, and Croatia, the Estonian company said in a statement on Monday.
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The price of the deal was not disclosed.
"We took shares in Serbia’s New Image in order to widen Fitek’s presence in Europe. We’re taking part in a modern business which offers invoice-sending services in the Balkans. New Image’s smart bill solution is customizable for a client’s needs and collects all billing information and forwards e-invoices in both digital and analogue channels," the management member of Fitek, Kaur Lohk, said in the statement.
Fitek and New Image are both well positioned to exploit European Union Directive 2014/55/EL which mandates that all EU businesses engaged in state tenders must be ready for e-invoicing by November 2018. As Serbia progresses on its path to EU membership, Fitek and New Image products will help their clients meet EU standards for transaction speed and transparency, the Estonian fintech company said.
"We’ll also be offering the FitekIn platform, a full-service purchase invoice solution which significantly reduces the manual labour of bookkeepers. When you accelerate financial transactions, you lower the cost of doing business, and you also free up your financial team to concentrate on bigger-picture issues,” the general manager of New Image, Vladimir Ilic, noted.
The partnership means Fitek Group now operates in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and exports its services to 11 countries. The group employs 240 people and its annual turnover exceeds 20 million euro ($24.5 million).
($ = 0.814742 euro)