Lloyds partners with Form3 to create group-wide payments platform
Lloyds Banking Group has revealed its strategic partnership with Form3, a cloud-based platform for payments.
The UK bank is acquiring an undisclosed minority equity stake in Form3 as part of the fintech’s next investment round, which is expected to complete in August.
“The potential of the cloud in payments is enormous,” says Lloyds director
The new technology partner joins Lloyds’ current partners Google Cloud and Microsoft.
New payments platform
Lloyds says the partnership will see it “investigate and develop” a cloud-based payments-as-a-service platform to underpin the entire banking group’s payment processes.
The platform will seek “simplify” Lloyds’ current payments capabilities. It will also create the basis for Lloyds’ response to the industry’s New Payments Architecture (NPA) initiative.
The initiative will replace the architecture used for today’s UK retail interbank payment systems, which are Bacs and Faster Payments. The bank also wants to use its Form3 partnership to enable data and new overlay services.
“The potential of the cloud in payments is enormous and is firmly at the forefront of our strategy,” says Lloyds’ director for payments and technical services, Otto Benz.
Who is Form3?
Founded in 2016, Form3 provides banks and financial services firms with cloud-native application programme interface (API) payments technology.
Last year, it launched its International Payments Business. The created the new arm to give financial institutions access to lower cost payments and foreign exchange (FX) services.
Form3 and its partner Ebury also landed a £5 million grant from the Banking and Competition Remedies fund (BCR) last year to prop up the new business arm.
In May, Form3 announced its work with fellow UK high street bank, Barclays. It enabled access to the SEPA instant payment scheme for fintechs.
Read next: Form3 partners with Pockit
