UK Challenger Bank Tandem Acquires Pariti For Money Management

U.K. challenger bank Tandem has acquired Pariti, a money management app that has collected 95,000 users.

Co-founded by FinTech veteran Ricky Knox, Tandem also recently purchased Harrods Bank, which enabled the startup to achieve its goals of moving into the U.K. banking market.

That acquisition gave Tandem a £200 million loan book and £300 million in deposits. And as part of the deal, Harrods’ Qatari owners injected £80 million of new money into the bank.

“We can accelerate our launch plans and start offering savings accounts soon,” said Tandem in a statement at the time. “We will continue developing and rolling out our app and credit card as planned, [now] with a little more spring in our step. When the deal is finalized, we’ll operate the whole business under the Tandem brand.”

While terms of the Pariti deal remain undisclosed, TechCrunch reports that Pariti CEO Matthew Ford and CTO Peter Townsend are joining Tandem.

Founded in 2014 by Ford, London-based Pariti is a mobile app that has access to your existing bank accounts. It uses calculations that allows the app to do everything from keeping track of how much is being paid in existing debt to suggesting how to pay off that debt faster. In addition, Pariti also has integrations with lending FinTechs Zopa and Lendable.

“Through their transactional data, we spot all fees and charges to show what is the real monthly cost of their debt,” said Ford. “Based on that data, we calculate how much users would be able to save every month if they were to replace that debt through a loan. With a near real-time view of a user’s financial standing, and our own proprietary assessment approach, Pariti can help lending partners get a much more accurate picture of consumer suitability, affordability and credit worthiness, and users can engage and improve their situation more transparently.”

Pariti’s investors included Index Ventures and JamJar Investments.