Open Banking Eyed To Boost B2B Finserv Value

Bank-FinTech collaboration is quickly becoming an essential component of facilitating small business loans as large lenders scramble to manage a surge of volume in paycheck protection program loan applications.

Beyond the U.S., B2B FinTechs continue to explore the opportunity to take advantage of open banking regulations and functionality to expand the value in financial products and services, including commercial cards, small business accounting platforms, and payments. Take a look at the latest B2B open banking efforts below.

Open Banking’s Biz Card Opportunity

While commercial cards can offer a range of value propositions for business users, many of those benefits relate to processes after payment is already made.

In a recent interview with PYMNTS, Payhawk Co-founder and CEO Hristo Borisov explained that the post-transaction opportunities of corporate cards exist in the ability to integrate with corporate bank accounts and wield financial data for analytics and reporting purposes.

Open banking can be key to capturing those benefits, he said, noting that Payhawk’s own offering that operates in cooperation with corporate bank accounts is “a much more flexible, integrated experience because of open banking regulations in place in Europe.” By connecting with businesses’ existing banks, corporate card programs won’t have to force bank-switching, he noted.

QR Codes Eye Overlooked Open Banking Opportunity

Open banking is often discussed in the context of data sharing and integration, but there is a component to open banking regulations in the U.K. that could also have significant impacts on B2B payments, as TrueLayer Chief Compliance Officer and Chief Operating Officer Shefali Roy explained to PYMNTS.

Open banking’s payments initiation function enables third parties to initiate payment as a result of connecting to end-users bank accounts, with TrueLayer recently wielding this functionality for a QR code-powered business payments solution.

“Each week we see businesses from a wide variety of sectors find a way to incorporate open banking products into their offerings,” said Roy, adding that QR codes are “an excellent example of the innovation we will see on the back of payments initiation.”

Tink Expands Via M&A

Based in Sweden, open banking technology company Tink recently announced the takeover of Spain’s Eurobits Technology, a firm that offers account aggregation solutions.

Eurobits’ existing open banking solution facilitates more than 50 million transactions a month in Europe and Latin America, with integrations across a range of banks including Santander and BBVA.

In a statement, Tink Co-Founder and CEO Daniel Kjellén said the acquisition will “strengthen our platform through increased connectivity” and give “existing Eurobits customers access to our payment initiation and data services.”

Yapily Raises VC For Open Banking Tools

U.K. startup Yapily announced a nearly $13 million Series A funding round, reports in EU-Startups said, led by Lakestar. Existing backers HV Holtzbrinck Ventures and LocalGlobal, as well as angel investors, also participated.

Yapily aims to enable open banking adoption throughout Europe by powering bank account data connectivity for third-party financial service providers. One of its existing customers is Intuit Quickbooks, which has adopted the Yapily application programming interface (API) to obtain deeper financial insights for its small business users.