Codat, the universal API for small business data that assists software providers and financial institutions with creating integrated products for their SME clients, has announced an integration partnership with the international tech platform Intuit (NASDAQ: INTU).
This partnership will aim to bring about “a new wave of Open Finance for SMBs and speed app development for QuickBooks,” according to a release.
In recent years, banking institutions and Fintech firms have worked cooperatively to pioneer Open Banking policies, “making progress for consumers by urging governments around the world to support open access to data from financial institutions.”
But for businesses, accounting software (not the bank account) serves as their core operating system, “making progress toward open accounting a more meaningful revolution for them,” the announcement noted.
While accounting APIs have been more open than banking institutions, there is still a lot of red tape and hidden barriers that “prevent small businesses from freely sharing their data.” The release also mentioned that Codat and Intuit are “helping to catalyze the first step towards a similar policy shift for accounting data to accelerate open finance policies that small businesses desperately need.”
“Intuit shares our commitment to making the lives of small businesses easier, so we’re thrilled to partner with them to streamline app development for QuickBooks,” stated Peter Lord, CEO & Co-Founder of Codat.
Lord added:
“By enabling the development of connected services, and ensuring secure, controlled open data sharing that specifically benefits small businesses, we’re not only furthering our mission but also helping start a larger conversation about the need for Open Finance for SMBs.”
Codat’s tech manages all the complexity of authentication, data mapping, configuration, and data validation so that application developers are able to bring their products to market faster and go through a quick app approval process with Intuit.
The partnership also adds “additional transparency and parameters around the data exchanged between Intuit, Codat, and the third-party app, ensuring secure but open access for small businesses to share their data.”
“At Intuit, we want to make it easier and faster to develop secure, high quality, QuickBooks-connected apps,” noted Jeremy Sulzmann, VP, Developers & Partners Business Segment Leader at Intuit.
Sulzmann added:
“We recognize that more QuickBooks developers are now using Codat to connect, and that by partnering with them we can accelerate the availability of new integrated features and services for QuickBooks customers.”