Banks in Estonia offer a wide range of financial services from everyday banking to sophisticated wealth management, and are also the biggest providers of leasing and factoring services.
Banks in Estonia offer a wide range of financial services from everyday banking to sophisticated wealth management, and are also the biggest providers of leasing and factoring services. The largest banks are subsidiaries and affiliates of Scandinavian banking groups. In addition, there are other banks that are Estonian-owned or have owners in other countries.
4 largest banks (by market share):
A full list of banks in Estonia can be found on the website of Estonian Banking Association.
It is hard to overstate the enormous role Estonia’s banks have played in creating and promoting the nation’s e-government solutions. Banks not only wholeheartedly embraced e-ID, encouraging customers to use their ID cards for secure transactions, even giving away free card readers, they also helped move the population online by developing and offering high-quality internet banking services. Today, over 99% of all banking transactions in the country are carried out online.
Users of bank services benefit from the convenience of having user-friendly online services available 24/7, a vast improvement over typical banking hours. In contrast with the US, where a third of money transfers are still carried out by writing and mailing checks, which can take days to process, Estonia’s e-banking system is simple, secure and practically instantaneous.
Based on regulatory changes in 2017, opening a bank account is now possible online using e‑ID or e-Residency card, a video interview recording and facial recognition technology. Banks are working hard to develop technical solutions that will allow them to welcome clients from anywhere without a face-to-face meeting by enhancing the security of customer identification.
Read more about e-banking on the webpage of e-Estonia.
Estonian e-residents can use a growing number of payment and banking services that are partnering with e-Residency. Some of these services are operating from Estonia, some from other countries.
There are even services that enable you to open a bank account for your business without physically visiting Estonia.
Find more information and an up-to-date list of banking and payments providers on e-Residency’s website and browse e-Residency’s FAQ for more information.
There is a variety of both national and EU grants available that support competitiveness, innovation, recruiting foreign specialists and much more. The Estonian government’s strategy focuses on human capital and smart economy investments.
Emphasis is on innovation and new business models in the following three smart specialization areas:
More information about various grants can be found on the websites of Enterprise Estonia and European Union’s Structural Funds in Estonia.
There are Enterprise Estonia’s investment aid scehemes available for shared service and R&D centres and for large investors.
There is a Foreign recruitment grant available for companies hiring from abroad. It is aimed at supporting recruitment of foreign information and communication technology or science and engineering specialists. More information can be found and an application filled here.
Here are some useful links regarding financing of a company:
You are also welcome to send us an enquiry for more specific information.
What is it like to run a business in Estonia? How to benefit from the e-solutions and the efficiency of our business culture? What are the opportunities in specific sectors?
The Estonian Investment Agency’s team is happy to help you via the complimentary e-consulting service.
