Magnetiq Bank (formerly JSC "LPB Bank" and ''Latvijas Pasta Banka'') is a

Latvia Latvia, officially the Republic of Latvia, is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is one of the three Baltic states, along with Estonia to the north and Lithuania to the south. It borders Russia to the east and Belarus to t ...

n bank. It has stated that its focus is providing

e-commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) refers to commercial activities including the electronic buying or selling products and services which are conducted on online platforms or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile co ...

acting as a

payment service provider A payment service provider (PSP) is a third-party company that allows businesses to accept electronic payments, such as credit card and debit card payments. PSPs act as intermediaries between those who make payments, i.e. consumers, and those who ...

fintech Financial technology (abbreviated as fintech) refers to the application of innovative technologies to products and services in the financial industry. This broad term encompasses a wide array of technological advancements in financial services, ...

, business finance and brokerage services. The bank has a large proportion of non-Latvian clients. The bank is a member of the Finance Latvia Association, which representing the Latvian financial sector on a national and international level. In 2024, the bank changed its name to Magnetiq Bank.

History

Foundation

It was founded on 5 September 2008 and changed its name to JSC "LPB Bank" on 15 December 2017. Until December 2023, JSC "LPB Bank" was wholly owned by the holding company Mono Ltd. On December 11, 2023, following approvals from the Bank of Latvia, the European Central Bank, and the Competition Council, Mono Ltd sold all its shares of JSC "LPB Bank" to JS
"Signet Bank"
This transaction led to a change in ownership and beneficiaries of JCS "LPB Bank", with planned adjustments in management to align with Signet Bank's strategic and developmental objectives. The bank head office building was initially intended for the needs of the “

Aeroflot PJSC AeroflotRussian Airlines (, ), commonly known as Aeroflot ( or ; , , ), is the flag carrier and the largest airline of Russia. Aeroflot is headquartered in the Central Administrative Okrug, Moscow, with its hub being Sheremetyevo Interna ...

” central agency and was built between 1984 and 1991. Modris Ģelzis, one of the trailblazers in contemporary Latvian architecture, created each façade radically differently. initially, the dominant of the building's centerpiece was a Rubik's cube, counterbalanced by a traditional building element – a nearby

wind vane A wind vane, weather vane, or weathercock is an list of weather instruments, instrument used for showing the wind direction, direction of the wind. It is typically used as an architectural ornament to the highest point of a building. The word ' ...

Investigations and fines

It was named in the investigation into the

2014 Moldovan bank fraud scandal In 2014, $1 billion disappeared from three Moldovan banks: ''Banca de Economii'', ''Unibank'' and ''Banca Socială''.ABLV Bank ABLV Bank was one of the largest private banks in the Baltic States, headquartered in Riga, Latvia with representative offices abroad from 1993 to 2018. Following accusations of money laundering by the United States Department of the Treasury an ...

and

PrivatBank The Public JSC PrivatBank () is the largest bank in Ukraine by assets. It was formed on 19 March 1992 and has been owned by the Government of Ukraine since 2016, after nationalisation. In early 2024, it was confirmed by the National Bank of U ...

It was fined 305,000

Euro The euro (currency symbol, symbol: euro sign, €; ISO 4217, currency code: EUR) is the official currency of 20 of the Member state of the European Union, member states of the European Union. This group of states is officially known as the ...

s for its part in this. In 2018, it was fined 2.2 million Euros by Latvia's ''Financial and Capital Market Commission'' (FKTK), 10% of its turnover, for "continuous non-compliance" with anti-

money laundering Money laundering is the process of illegally concealing the origin of money obtained from illicit activities (often known as dirty money) such as drug trafficking, sex work, terrorism, corruption, and embezzlement, and converting the funds i ...

and counter-terrorist financing legislation. The FCMC said, amongst other issues, that "''the Bank failed to give sufficient weight to the unusually large, complex, inter-related transactions that have no apparent economic or visible lawful purpose''".

New direction

In 2018, the bank submitted to the FCMC a new strategy of the operation foresees the focus of the provision of FinTech services, e-commerce, the banks reorientation from the

CIS countries The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) is a regional intergovernmental organization in Eurasia. It was formed following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. It covers an area of and has an estimated population of 246,200,194. ...

to the

European Economic Area The European Economic Area (EEA) was established via the ''Agreement on the European Economic Area'', an international agreement which enables the extension of the European Union's single market to member states of the European Free Trade Asso ...

(EEA), OECD.

References

External links

* Banks of Latvia {{Europe-bank-stub