We have a lot to share this week and hope you're ready for all of our announcements. As part of our passion to continue providing you with industry-leading information on the open banking segment globally. This update will have the weekly additions to the Open Banking Tracker (Banks, APIs, TPPs, etc.) and a look at how Open Banking is changing the way that taxes get collected!
Our Current Coverage
- • We track 2,755 banks providing Open Banking services! (+5 from last week)
- • 1,012 APIs currently tracked on our platform!
- • 404 TPPs in the ecosystem!
- • 86 Global markets covered!
- • 35+ Open Banking API Aggregators! (with more coming very soon...)
- • PSD2 API & PSD2 Open Banking coverage!
- • Track over 60+ data points for all open banking projects!
- • And we are growing on a continuous basis... 🚀🚀🚀
Developments (Feb 9th to Feb 15th):
We initiated coverage and provide Open Banking information for:
- • Fair - Mobile-first alternative to traditional banking — that values people over profit.
- • Standard Bank South Africa - Financial services group and is Africa's biggest lender by assets.
- • Bidvest Bank - It is a niche bank specializing in foreign exchange and providing retail banking, vehicle financing, and insurance.
- • Zeta - Helps the modern-day couple win at money.
- • Biggest Publicly Available TPP Registry in the Industry! 🚀🚀🚀
- • And many more!
We continue to cover over 35 aggregators!
Open Banking Use Case Spotlight: Tax Collection w/ Ecospend
The UK tax authority has handed a £3 million Open Banking contract to fintech startup Ecospend, intending to make it easy for taxpayers to submit payments directly from their bank accounts, rather than through debit or credit card. Viewed as a significant boost to the uptake of Open Banking services in the UK, the HMRC worked with the Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE) on the procurement exercise, which went out to tender last year.
Currently, taxpayers must open their banking software and manually set up a bank transfer payment, opening the possibility that an incorrect reference gets used for payment. Under the new systems, payments will be sent directly from a payer’s bank account, using validated HMRC details to address fat finger errors. The system can also reduce fraud, as money gets transferred without the need to share card or bank details. HMRC expects that Account Information Services will enable it to access customers' transactional data to deliver "enhanced and tailored financial services."
Founded in late-2017, Ecospend has been operating in stealth mode until late last year when it pitched for the HMRC tender. Metin Erkman, founder and CEO of Ecospend, says: “Since founding Ecospend, we have spent the last three-years focused on building our underlying technology and API in-house. Because of this, we’re now able to provide the best solutions, such as our account-to-account payment system for HMRC. But, this is just the first step, we understand if we’re really looking to deliver on the promise of open banking, innovation needs to happen at an ecosystem level, and that’s what we’re here to do.”
What is the key takeaway…
Open Finance allows for the walls of separation to get torn down, reducing fraud and redundancies in the process. With having your finances integrated with software, the hassle of paying taxes, tracking your bills, and overall footprint gets reduced dramatically as the software does the work for you. This makes everyone happy; the taxpayer has less paperwork, the government gets the right sum, and the possibility of tax fraud diminishes with every customer integration. Not to mention the potential network effect you can create from this…
Feedback
Please feel free to email us back with any coverage or data requests to implement or improve our current data set! We are a customer centric provider and want to make sure our users are as satisfied as can be!
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Have a great week and stay safe!
The Banq team