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Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) is a key component to open banking, in which banks open up their systems and allow third parties to access their data to enhance their own services. This growing market is transforming retail banking, reshaping incumbents’ relationships with customers, and easing entry for fintechs.
The UK is leading the open banking movement with regulatory efforts that are reverberating throughout the world. Countries across continents have introduced open banking regulations of their own, indicating that the financial services industry is moving toward an era where sharing data and infrastructure will be table stakes.
Here are the top companies already implementing BaaS strategies, broken out into two main categories:
- Pure BaaS Providers
- Retail Banks w/ BaaS Services
solarisBank
solarisBank bills itself as a “tech company with a banking license.” The Berlin-based startup holds a German banking license and provides a BaaS platform that enables businesses to offer fully digital and compliant white labeled financial services to their end-customers.
Founded in 2016, solarisBank’s lets customers seamlessly integrate financial services into their offerings through modern RESTful APIs. The team is focused on building fully automated processes, providing nearly invisible infrastructure to end users, and creating a global digital ecosystem for customers to build their own scalable banking products.
The company boasts nearly 60 global corporate clients, and closed a €56.6 million ($62.7 million) Series B funding round in early 2018 that included investments from BBVA, Visa, SBI Group, and Lakestar.
Some of solarisBank’s customers include:
- Kontist
- Börse Stuttgart
- Smava
- Trade Republic
- Tomorrow
- Al Baraka Bank
Learn more about solarisBank.
Bankable
Bankable is a London-based startup focused on enabling incumbent financial institutions, fintechs, and other corporations to bring new payments solutions to market. Its BaaS solutions include a virtual ledger manager, digital banking, payment card programs, and e-wallets.
Its end-to-end payment services are accessible via an interoperable proprietary platform that’s PCI-DSS (Payment Card Industry – Data Security Standards) certified and hosted in Tier-4 data centers for advanced security. Bankable helps its partners meet the technological and regulatory challenges of developing disruptive financial services.
In April of 2019, Bankable announced a partnership with Visa to accelerate its digital banking solutions.
Some of Bankable’s customers include:
- Spendesk
- GetYourGuide
- Royale Oceanic
Learn more about Bankable.
Treezor
Treezor is an API-based white label core banking platform that operates as a “one-stop shop payment solution” both receiving and issuing payments and covering the full payments scope.
The firm facilitates payment management by enabling its more than 40 licensed and unlicensed fintech clients – including neobanks, professional banks, and marketplaces – to provide their customers personalized payment services such as wire transfers, peer-to-peer (P2P) transfers, account management, digital wallets, check acquiring, as well as physical and virtual prepaid, debit, and credit cards, and dedicated International Bank Account Numbers (IBANs).
Founded in 2016, the Paris-based startup has approval from the French Prudential Supervision and Resolution Authority (ACPR), and is a STEP2 (SEPA) and Principal member of the Mastercard networks. Treezor was acquired by the Societe Generale group in 2019 to accelerate the parent company’s open innovation strategy, as well as the international expansion of Treezor in Europe.
Some of Treezor’s fintech clients include:
- Lydia
- Qonto
- Lunchr
- Shine
- Upflow
- Xaalys
Learn more about Treezor.
11:FS Foundry
UK-based SaaS/PaaS company 11:FS Foundry is in the process of developing a platform to offer core banking capabilities leveraging tech that eliminates the need to choose between agility and scalability.
The firm is looking to make core banking upgrades and overhauls – historically seen as high risk, high cost, and, frankly, to be avoided – much more attractive and scalable for clients by diminishing cost, time to market, and barriers of archaic infrastructure.
In mid-2019 the firm, which launched a year earlier as a subsidiary of 11:FS, announced that its investment partner and first lending client, DNB, had committed a second round of funding to the project.
Learn more about 11:FS Foundry.
Cambr
Formed in 2018 from a partnership between Q2 and StoneCastle, Cambr boasts a full-stack banking service and the nation’s largest distributed deposit platform (StoneCastle’s network of over 800 community banks).
Although it does not offer completely turnkey BaaS solutions like some of its competitors, Cambr offers the necessary underlying infrastructure by playing to the strengths of its founding partner companies: extensive industry experience, robust technology assets, and strategic banking relationships.
The company currently offers basic deposit accounts, compliance, payments, banking, and debit cards.
Some of Cambr’s customers include:
- Qapital
- MoneyLion
Learn more about Cambr.
ClearBank
WorldPay founder Nick Ogden unveiled UK-based ClearBank in 2017 after three years of secretly working on the project. The “bank for banks” provides no services to consumers — instead enabling financial service providers, FCA-regulated businesses, and fintechs to build their own solutions and services.
ClearBank is notably the UK’s first new clearing bank in 250 years, and aims to transform the clearing bank experience and create a new level of open competition and transparency in the UK market. Its technology stack transforms the ability for financial institutions to provide current accounts to their customers, resulting in faster, more efficient payments, and financial inclusion.
The firm provides agency banking services including secure access to core banking solutions, payment schemes and systems, all operated within a liquidity-managed account.
Some of ClearBank’s clients include:
-
Tide
-
Oaknorth
-
Nationwide
-
Dozens
Learn more about ClearBank.
Starling Bank
In October 2018, Starling Bank CEO Anne Boden authored a company blog post announcing “the death of transaction banking” and, in turn, the firm’s entrance into the BaaS and Payments-as-a-Service (PaaS) space.
With its pioneering BaaS offering, Starling has opened its APIs to enable banks, fintechs, retailers, and brands to use its banking license to develop customized financial products such as savings or current accounts and debit cards.
Some of Starling Bank’s BaaS and PaaS clients include:
- Raisin UK
- Ditto
- UK Department for Work and Pensions
- Xero
- Telleroo
- Vitesse
- PelicanPay
Learn more about Starling Bank.
Fidor Bank
Fidor Bank is a German digital-only challenger bank that helps financial, retail, and telecom businesses bring their digital banking concepts to life. The startup provides turnkey white label banking solutions covering bank license across Europe, technology, compliance, risk management, go-to-market strategy, and customer service.
Fidor designs, tests, and builds its clients’ digital banking projects into its full-service proprietary digital banking platform fidorOS (fOS). Customers can also build a unique customer experience on top of Fidor’s APIs if they choose.
Some of Fidor’s clients include:
- O2 Telefonica
- ADIB
- Van Lanschot
In 2017 Fidor Solutions and Fidor Bank were acquired by Groupe BPCE.
Learn more about Fidor Bank.
Green Dot
After making a name for itself as the leading provider of prepaid debit cards and, later, mobile banking technology and tax refund disbursement processing, Pasadena-based “branchless” bank Green Dot joined the ranks of BaaS companies in Q1 2019. The fintech’s platform provides end-to-end infrastructure for managing a banking or payments program at scale.
Green Dot saw immediate returns after the initial BaaS launch, posting a 6% increase year-over-year in total operating revenue from Q1 2018. CEO Steve Streit attributed the bank’s spike in active accounts primarily to its BaaS programs and partnerships, which added 420,000 new active accounts in Q1 2019.
Some of Green Dot’s BaaS customers include:
- Uber
- Walmart
- PayPal
- Stash
- Apple Pay Cash
- Pangaea
- EasyCorp
Learn more about Green Dot.
BBVA
BaaS isn’t just for startups and emerging players. Multinational Spanish banking group – and one of the largest financial institutions in the world – Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, S.A. (BBVA) moved its open platform out of beta in October 2018.
By connecting to BBVA’s core digital banking platform, third parties can access its APIs and specific financial service features including Move Money, Identity Verification, Account Origination, and Card Issuance.
In addition to offering paid access, the Open Platform team operates a sandbox testing environment, so interested companies can work through their proposals before fully signing up.
Companies using BBVA’s APIs include:
- Simple
- Azlo
- Xero
- Modo
- digit.co
Learn more about BBVA’s open platform.
Growth of Banking-as-a-Service
The open banking movement is proliferating around the world, creating new opportunities for emerging players in the space, and forcing legacy banks to re-examine their business models as a result.
Many industry executives already view open banking as an inevitable and accelerating trend in financial services. In fact, Accenture projects open banking-related services will account for 7% of total banking revenue by 2020 — less than two years after the UK’s open banking regulation rollout.
For now, these regulations don’t require banks to begin offering BaaS, so those that choose to do so will be ahead of the curve — and likely see high demand as a result.
To keep you ahead of the industry’s biggest shifts – like the open banking movement and BaaS – Business Insider Intelligence is launching Banking in September, a new research area with coverage including BaaS and open banking, consumer and business banking, mobile and online banking, digital account opening, and neobanks.
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