Europe’s open banking infrastructure platform Yapily has partnered with the UK Fintech, Allica Bank, to bring the “benefits” of open banking top-ups to UK SME current accounts.
Having launched to market in 2020, Allica has become the challenger bank for established SMEs with “between 5 and 250 employees.”
It launched its flagship business current account – the Business Rewards Account – in early 2023 to give established SMEs a “more rewarding and powerful current account, with the support of a dedicated relationship manager.”
By leveraging Yapily’s open banking technology, with its business bank coverage across the UK, Allica Bank is now “building on its mission to give established businesses the banking they deserve by enabling them to top-up their accounts even faster.”
Instead of manually authorizing and transferring funds between apps and accounts, business owners can “log into their Allica account, select the amount they wish to top-up, and authorize the payment – all in a few clicks.”
They can then keep this money for their day-to-day spending in their Allica current account, or “transfer it into their instant-access Savings Pot.”
Beyond sending money between accounts, the Yapily and Allica Bank partnership also “solves the most critical financial challenges facing SMEs.”
Despite accounting for a third of UK employment and turnover, small businesses are “disproportionately impacted by time-consuming and error-prone manual processes, and are significantly underserved by banks.”
Misdirected payments, delayed transfers, and logging “into multiple platforms create friction and inefficiencies that hold small businesses back.”
Yapily’s technology, instead, securely initiates payments in real time, ensuring funds “are transferred directly without the need for multiple logins or manual steps while providing the highest levels of security and compliance.”
This feature is the first of Yapily’s open banking solutions to be “rolled out to Allica Bank customers, with more to follow in the coming months.”
Allica Bank is the latest in a number of fintechs, enterprises, and other companies – “including Adyen, Alipay, Intuit QuickBooks, Pleo, Zilch and more – trusting Yapily to help them enhance customer experiences, streamline operations, and unlock new revenue streams.”
Yapily CEO and founder Stefano Vaccino said:
“At Yapily, we believe in driving meaningful innovation that makes a difference for businesses and their customers. This partnership allows Allica Bank to bring the speed, simplicity, and security of open banking to their SME customers, empowering them to manage their finances with greater efficiency. We greatly value Allica Bank’s trust in our capabilities and are delighted that they see open banking as a core enhancer of their products. By removing manual processes and reducing errors, we’re not just helping Allica Bank’s customers save time, but allowing them to focus on growing their businesses.”
Allica Bank’s Product Director for Payments, Nida Sattar, added:
“Business owners are busy people. It’s why, when it comes to their bank, our focus is on how we can make life easier for our customers, alongside the human support they get from their relationship manager. Being able to easily and quickly top up your account, rather than faffing around with manual payments, is one great example of this. And using open banking in this way provides important security benefits for our customers, too.”
Yapily is Europe’s open banking infrastructure platform “solving a fundamental problem in financial services today: access.”
It connects its customers to thousands of European banks “allowing them to access financial data and initiate payments.”
In this way, Yapily enables companies to “embed the power of open banking into their products and services, creating better and fairer financial services for everyone.”
Yapily’s customers range from fintechs to industry professionals “operating in a number of verticals.”
It counts Adyen, Alipay +, Intuit Quickbooks, Pleo, “among hundreds of businesses using its platform today.”
To date, Yapily has raised “$69.4 million in funding and continues to scale across Europe.”