London-based open banking fintech Yapily has recently secured $51 million in Series B funding to expand its open finance infrastructure across Europe. The funding round was led by Sapphire Ventures, but also included additional funding from existing investors Lakestar, HV Capital and Latitude, whose initial investment fuelled Yapily’s growth to becoming a leading banking infrastructure provider.
Open Banking and Open Finance are, perhaps, relatively unknown outside the Fintech sector. While challenger banks have grabbed headlines, the work that has gone into open banking and finance is, arguably, far more transformational. By creating an infrastructure that allows a customer to securely liberate their financial data from the silo of their institution there is almost unlimited potential for innovation by other institutions and third-party developers.
The glue of financial innovation
European institutions have led the way in the adoption of open finance. This has allowed the development of a range of apps and products that take advantage, simplifying and speeding up processes for the end customer, whether they are a business or consumer. Open finance links have to be approved by each customer, following an authentication process hosted by their financial institution. This creates trust, users can remove access from their usual banking app, but means third parties can act as proxies. This might be as simple as creating a unified interface for multiple accounts, to managing a complex investment and pension portfolio in a single app. Yapily provides the infrastructure that allows the necessary secure connections to be made. ...