Open banking infrastructure across Europe has been built by a small number of companies that compete on connectivity coverage, data quality, and pricing — and the cost dimension matters more than most observers initially appreciate. Nordigen was founded in Riga in 2016 with a thesis that open banking should be free at the basic level, with monetisation coming from value-added services rather than per-call API pricing. The free-tier offering changed the economics of building open banking products for European fintechs and developers, removing the cost barrier that had made experimentation expensive. Nordigen's platform covered banks across European markets through PSD2-compliant connectivity, providing account aggregation and payment initiation services. The company was acquired by GoCardless in 2022, integrating its open banking infrastructure into one of the largest European bank payment platforms. The acquisition reflects the consolidation pattern in European open banking — the standalone infrastructure businesses being absorbed into larger payment or banking groups that need the connectivity capability. In the European open banking landscape, Nordigen's free-tier model created competitive pressure that benefited the broader developer ecosystem, even after its independent existence ended through the GoCardless acquisition.