Saldo Bank Partners with finperks to Launch Embedded Rewards and 10% Cashback for Nordic Customers

Finland’s Saldo Bank has partnered with finperks to integrate a brand-funded rewards layer into its banking platform. For fintech professionals, this move highlights the growing necessity of embedded loyalty programs to drive customer activation and retention in a competitive European market, leveraging API infrastructure to bypass the need for building complex internal reward systems.

What was announced

The partnership introduces a sophisticated loyalty layer to Saldo Bank’s existing customer offering. By utilizing a single API integration provided by finperks, the bank can now offer its users brand-funded cashback and reward programs. This system is designed to drive engagement and long-term loyalty by rewarding customers based on their actual spending behavior across more than 1,000 international brands throughout Europe.

The initial rollout is focused on the Finnish market, which the companies identify as one of Europe’s most innovative banking sectors. However, the agreement is structured for broader reach, with the rollout set to expand into additional Scandinavian and European markets in the future. For Saldo Bank, the integration allows for a measurable lift in usage frequency and engagement without the bank having to build the underlying merchant network or technical infrastructure itself.

For finperks, this Finnish go-live marks a significant milestone in its international expansion strategy. After establishing its presence in Germany, the Berlin-based infrastructure provider is now focusing on core European markets to scale its prepaid and rewards ecosystem. The integration ensures that high-profile brands, including Apple, Wolt, Zalando, Adidas, and Playstation, are seamlessly embedded into the banking experience, making rewards a native part of the digital user journey.

"At Saldo Bank, we're constantly looking for new ways to add value for our customers. Partnering with finperks helps us democratise access to rewards and cashback from top brands on everyday spend, making our customers' money go further — and seeing a measurable lift in engagement and usage frequency at the same time. In finperks we found a likeminded partner with a great solution: they made it remarkably easy to plug into a network of leading brands without us having to build any of that infrastructure ourselves."

Tuomas Nenonen, CPO of Saldo Bank.

The companies involved

Saldo Bank is a specialized financial institution headquartered in Finland that has been aggressively expanding its footprint across Northern Europe. The bank provides a range of lending and deposit services, recently making headlines for its entry into the Swedish market where it sought to disrupt traditional banking with competitive fixed-term deposit rates. Saldo Bank positions itself as a digital-first player, often utilizing strategic partnerships to enhance its core banking stack and provide value-added services to its customer base.

finperks is a Berlin-based fintech specializing in API infrastructure for the global prepaid and rewards market. The company is led by a management team with deep roots in the European fintech ecosystem, including Co-Founder and Co-CEO Sebastian Seifert, Co-CEO and Founder Achim Bönsch, and Co-Founder and MD Andreas Veller. The firm’s primary value proposition lies in its ability to connect financial institutions to a vast network of merchant rewards through a single point of entry. Having successfully launched its services in Germany, finperks is now positioning itself as a key infrastructure layer for banks looking to implement brand-funded loyalty programs across the continent.

What FF News has reported before

FF News has closely tracked Saldo Bank’s rapid evolution and its strategy of collaborative growth. In September 2026, we reported on how Celeri and Saldo Bank Launch Integrated Financial Stack for Nordic SMEs, a move aimed at streamlining business banking. This followed a significant cross-border collaboration where Lunar and Saldo Bank Forge Partnership to Transform Nordic Banking and Payment Solutions.

The bank’s product expansion was further bolstered in late 2024 when Enfuce Launches Saldo Bank’s First Payment Card Products, providing the necessary hardware for its growth strategy. Earlier that year, the institution signaled its regional ambitions as Saldo Bank opens in Sweden and raises the interest rates on fixed-term deposits to a new level, establishing itself as a serious contender in the Scandinavian deposit market.

What this means

This partnership signals a shift in how mid-tier and digital banks approach customer retention. In an era of high customer acquisition costs, the "loyalty-as-a-service" model is becoming a critical defensive moat. By outsourcing merchant relationship management to an API provider like finperks, banks can offer the same perks as global giants without the administrative burden. This puts significant pressure on legacy institutions that still rely on manual, siloed reward programs. The industry is moving toward a reality where brand-funded cashback is a standard expectation rather than a premium feature, raising the question of how banks will differentiate when everyone has access to the same 1,000 brands.