Romania: Digital financial inclusion in Romania

The project was implemented in Bucharest, with a total value of EUR 738.375, out of which EUR 420.000 non-refundable grant. As part of the Whizzer project, an open source software solution was developed, which offers financial operations as a service to SMEs, to help them automate and centralize common financial flows, at a very low cost: balance sheet, salary payments, invoicing, money flow automation, accounts payable and receivable, cash reporting. The target group includes banks, financial service providers and SMEs across Europe, with focus on SMEs.

Business Information Systems (Allevo) saw the potential for offering financial operations as a service to such companies. Whizzer is a customer oriented software developer. The company designs and develops software solutions that process financial transactions and achieve compliance to standards and regulations.

Allevo and Bakken Baeck applied to the EEA and Norway Grants SMEs Growth Programme in Romania, under Information Communication Technology, and were awarded a project. The project will increase the rate of financial inclusion and help SMEs lower the cost and overhead of running financial operations in-house.

Bilateral cooperation with Norway

Allevo teamed up with the Norwegian partner Bakken Baeck to provide a solution. The main role of Bakken Baeck is to leverage data processed by Allevo’s software component to provide data insights.

Bakken Baeck will deliver the artificial intelligence (AI) component design. This will enhance the software solution with AI capabilities and leverage data insights, data exploration and model choice. The partner will also develop AI capability resulting into a software component, tested and integrated with Allevo’s software component.

Financial inclusion to help SMEs lower their costs

The project will research available open source software components that can be reused, including technical and infrastructure requirements, and design of the software. It will develop the SME solution and implement it an open source software solution that offers financial operations as a service.

The aim is to extend the hardware and software infrastructure to build the development & test infrastructure, set up a collaborative development infrastructure required to run the software solution, create a software repository shared with the project partner and set-up platforms. The project will publish the source code openly on Github and the FINkers United open source community (fintp.org)

Results of the project

• An open source software solution license (GPL v3) developed by the promoter that offers financial operations as a service to SMEs
• Permanent full-time jobs created: 5 positions covering: 1 researcher (for the R&D component), 1 analyst/solution manager, 1 developer, 1 tester, 1 deployment engineer

The SMEs Growth Programme in Romania

The project is supported by Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein through the EEA and Norway Grants. See more opportunities under the SMEs Growth Programme in Romania.