Challenger BankiFi launches with open banking battle cry
BankiFi has entered the crowded market with its multi-bank aggregator platform as it looks for a place among the new open banking world order.
It says it aims to equip financial services providers with a “consent centric platform” that enables them to open up their business to external (fintech) partners to use, monitor and monetise.
Mark Hartley, founding partner at BankiFi, says “interest income is coming down” and “banks recognise value add is the only way to build out the trust and relevance with their customers”.
The platform’s launching customer is Nordea’s open banking developer portal – and the first solution is called “Pocket Treasurer”. This combines aspects of cash management with lending and “pushes advice out to customers”.
Claus Richter, head of CM customer solutions at Nordea, says the deal with BankiFi has “proven that co-creation with third parties on the open banking platform will turbo charge our development of new products”.
BankiFi says it is self-funded with additional resources from thestartupfactory.tech, a firm located in Manchester (UK) that builds software applications. The latter also selects, trains and coaches IT staff for the BankiFi team and RedCompass, a London-based advisory firm.
BankiFi operates out of the UK and the Netherlands.
Hartley has held a range of management, sales, innovation and strategy roles in the tech industry for the financial services segment in the APAC region and Europe, most recently at Clear2Pay and FIS. He currently serves as an advisor on PSD2 and open banking to Nordea and is advisor to the board of Nationwide Building Society.
Conny Dorrestijn is the other co-founder and has worked in the fintech industry in a range of marketing and business development roles (Nixdorf, ACT, Clear2Pay, FIS). She is also an advisory board member to Holland FinTech and AdviceRobo.
