Banking application programming interfaces (APIs) are increasingly common in the market as more banks turn to APIs to digitize their services and collaborate with FinTech companies.
But according to Alex Mifsudco-founder and CEO of a London-based integrated finance startup Weaverbetween these APIs and the elements that end customers would like to see, there is still a lot to be done to create the right user experience, taking into account Know-Your-Customer (KYC) controls and compliance as well as risk management and from understanding the activity that is running on these APIs.
Integrated finance, he said, can enable companies to integrate these financial services into third-party applications seamlessly and efficiently, bypassing the complex back-end technology used by most banking service offerings as as a service (BaaS).
“This gap between banking APIs and what these companies need to do in order to be able to create this completely integrated experience and do it in a legitimate way, [is] the problem that Weavr solves. This is where we fit in the tech stack,” Mifsud told PYMNTS in an interview.
Since launching in 2020, the London-based FinTech provider has seen rapid adoption of its payment and banking solutions across a range of businesses and sectors, including healthcare, education, logistics, real estate and Human Resource Management.
Related News: London FinTech Startup Weavr Secures $40M in Funding
And over the past 18 months, the business-to-business (B2B) company has raised more than $55 million, including $40 million in a Series A announced last month, to pursue its goal of disrupting the current BaaS model.
According to Mifsud, their main customers – called “digital innovators” – are online businesses that integrate financial services into all kinds of digital applications and are overwhelmed with the responsibility of managing data security, registering customers and provide services in a secure manner.
Weavr solves these problems, which are “typically complex to build and expensive to operate,” Mifsud said, allowing companies to get to market much faster, get started with much less capital, and ultimately grow. run these services in their apps in a way that doesn’t involve a lot of financial expertise and services.
Ready-to-use financing
When integrating apps, the job of a digital innovator is not just to find banks and financial institutions willing to provide the services. There is an added workload of using multiple technology vendors to handle different elements of the process, which can come with a hefty price tag.
“If you only take one thing, like identity verification, to be able to accept a client, you will need to find vendors that allow you to capture data such as passport details and proof of address and then process it. integrate into your user experience,” explained Mifsud.
And once a company contracts with all the different companies and vendors to process transactions and manage fraud and risk monitoring, they then have to integrate everything, which is a huge and time-consuming task, he said. -he adds.
That’s why Weavr’s plug-and-play finance solutions help eliminate the cost and burden of these multiple vendor relationships by pre-configuring APIs into integrated finance solutions, so that with a one contract and one solution, businesses can easily specify what needs to be done and complete tasks at a much faster rate.
“Basically, you’ve saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in capital before moving to your first transaction, and you’ve also saved months of development time and engineering resources, and ultimately time to market.” “, he noted.
The UK’s superior regulatory prowess
Following Weavr’s rapid expansion into European markets, including the UK, Germany, Spain and Portugal, Mifsud said they are now looking to expand their business internationally, starting by the United States.
Another goal is to collaborate with developers, customers and innovators to refine the concept of Plug-and-Play Finance. Mifsud wants to make it the best experience for its online business customers in terms of speed of integration, security and responsiveness.
Overall, he said they were “lucky” to have launched operations in the UK, which has “one of the most sophisticated and advanced regimes” in both Europe and the world. which provides clear regulations on how to be compliant and how financial services can be done electronically.
This clarity on the regulatory framework, Mifsud said, means there are a host of tools and expertise in the UK market that make their jobs easier. “And it’s an incredible stepping stone for a company like ours to be able to build on and ultimately [help create] platforms that work [well].”
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NEW PYMNTS DATA: ACCOUNT OPENING AND LOAN SERVICE IN THE DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT
On: Forty-two percent of US consumers are more likely to open accounts with financial institutions that facilitate automatic sharing of their bank details upon sign-up. The PYMNTS study Account opening and loan management in the digital environmentsurveyed 2,300 consumers to explore how FIs can leverage open banking to engage customers and create a better account opening experience.
