Open Payments Raises $3.2 Million for B2B Open Banking

Swedish open banking platform Open Payments plans to scale after raising $3.2 million.

The growth round, as reported Wednesday (March 29) by EU Startups, will allow the Stockholm-based company to extend its offering to business-to-business (B2B) companies as it expands to new markets and picks up new partners.

“We see an increasing demand from leading accounting and ERP systems and other financial systems that want to utilize open banking in their products in a secure and reliable way,” Co-Founder and CEO Louise Brandt said.

“Above all, they want to be able to provide various payments for their business customers, such as supplier payments and salary payouts.”

PYMNTS has reached out to Open Payments for comment but has not yet received a reply.

Founded in 2017, the company’s platform connects to commercial banks using application programming interface (API) technology, embedding services such as payments, account reconciliation and cash management directly in client applications.

Research by PYMNTS has found that a notable share of executives from financial institutions believe that working with FinTechs on payments digitization is a key strategy for addressing B2B payments friction.

Thirty-one percent of the executives surveyed said this attribute is “very helpful” while 14% said it is “the most helpful,” according to “The Innovation Gap: Meeting the Challenge of Corporate Payments Modernization,” a collaboration between PYMNTS and FIS.

The report also found that FIs need to hone in on on four key innovation areas to better address clients’ B2B pain points: providing a centralized view of cash flow and liquidity; streamlining business user authentications; simplifying invoice reconciliation; and offering speedier supplier and vendor onboarding tools that can rapidly scale when new businesses are added.

Meanwhile, PYMNTS’ Karen Webster spoke earlier this month with Chris Jameson, managing director, head of GTS product management EMEA at Bank of America (BofA) and The Bank of London Chief Markets Officer Shaunt Sarkissian about what it will take for open banking to take off in Europe.

Jameson pointed to “pay by bank” technology as a feature he thinks will drive open banking adoption as it catches fire in Europe, where more than 60% of consumers are increasingly embracing digital shopping and about 7 out of 10 people connect to the web chiefly by using their mobile phones.

And Sarkissian added that transaction use cases that avoid major card networks like Visa and Mastercard can also make a difference in promoting higher usage and adoption levels in the U.K. and EU markets.