When Kvika acquired Netgíró in January 2021, the bank also took a 40% stake in the company that had built it. What began as one product engagement became the partnership that, in our CEO's words, lifted Moberg to a new level.
The bank bought a product — and met the team behind it
Kvika came to know Moberg by acquiring Netgíró, the buy now, pay later platform we have engineered and operated since 2013. In the words of Kvika's CEO Ármann Þorvaldsson, “it quickly became clear that this was a great company, and that stronger ties to it could benefit the bank.” Kvika went on to buy 40% of Moberg and to move software initiatives from the bank across to us.
It is the shape of partnership we would choose: a bank investing in a team whose work it had already watched at close range, rather than buying development capacity on paper. The commitment ran both ways — our founder has travelled to Iceland more than forty times since that first Netgíró engagement.
Inside Iceland's technology landscape
Around 75% of Moberg's revenue now comes from Iceland — roughly €4 million (575 million ISK) a year — working with Netgíró, Heimkaup, YAY, Sýn, Sidekick Health, Aurbjörg and Arnarlax. The work spans product engineering and, increasingly, data infrastructure: Azure data warehouses, systems that integrate many sources into one, and Power BI reporting that lets clients tighten data governance, speed up financial reporting and put compliance reporting on a repeatable footing.
The Croatia–Iceland model pairs strong Croatian engineering education with Iceland's inventive business culture and its acute shortage of specialist talent — the gap we exist to close. The team has picked up a working amount of Icelandic along the way. There is precedent for the combination: Dagur Sigurðsson took the Croatian handball team to World Championship silver inside a year.
“I think it's safe to say that every single project Josip and his team have taken on has been solved outstandingly, on time, and at a lower cost than we could have.”
Where it goes next
Other Icelandic companies report much the same experience, and the work keeps growing at a pace we can sustain. From our side, Kvika's investment marked a real step up for the company. What follows is more of the same, deliberately: strengthening the Icelandic operation, building the kind of decade-long client relationships Netgíró has turned out to be, and extending into Scandinavia.
