Accuity buys London fintech Apply Financial

Written by Ruby Hinchliffe
13th March 2020

Accuity has bought Apply Financial, a London-based fintech which digitises payment data entry.

While the size and terms of the deal were not disclosed, Accuity says the acquisition is part of the firm’s strategy to build on its account validation solutions for banks, fintechs and other financial institutions (FIs).

Payment delays are a major driver of income inequality in America

Apply Financial’s main product Validate is based on application programme interface (API) and cloud technology, enabling FIs to remove payment processing errors by submitting the exact pinpointed numbers for bank accounts and payment details.

Validate is designed to reduce payment processing costs and boost the speed of transactions. By buying it, Accuity is acting in line with the wider industry’s move to faster, real-time payments.

Payment delays are a major driver of income inequality in America. The population’s poorest lost more than $100 billion to payday lenders, check cashers, and bank overdraft fees during the 2010s because of slow payments, according to the US central bank.

As a specialist provider of automated payment validation solutions, Apply Financial can improve Accuity’s straight through processing (STP) rates.

“With the proliferation of faster payment schemes around the world and escalating consumer and business expectations, STP is no longer just an efficiency issue, but a competitive differentiator for firms,” Accuity says in a company statement.

Accuity’s Bankers Almanac for Payments portfolio already delivers bank and routing data to drive the payment process, but now it can integrate Apply Financial’s Validate product into the process to remove even more friction and introduce even more automation.

“The payments industry is in the midst of a drastic transformation, with speed and efficiency at the forefront of its evolution,” says Accuity’s EVP of global payments and Know Your Customer, David White.

“In the near term, Apply Financial’s advanced technology will enable us to offer clients a cloud-based, real-time payments and account validation solution to dramatically increase customer STP rates and provide payments certainty.

“In the longer-term, the technology will fuel our innovation and enable us to deliver the next generation of payments intelligence solutions to meet our customers’ requirements.”