In venture capital news, London startup TrueLayer has raised $3 million in Series A funding so that it can enable FinTech companies to access bank APIs.
According to TechCrunch, the Series A funding round was led by Anthemis Group, with participation from existing investor Connect Ventures. The money will be used to expand the TrueLayer team and increase coverage of supported banks before it expands beyond beta testing later this year.
The EU Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2), which will become law by January 2018, will force banks operating within the EU to offer read and write access, so that, with a person’s consent, third-party apps and services can access their bank account data, including making and receiving payments on their behalf.
“We believe that PSD2 will be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for startups to displace incumbent banks and financial service providers,” TrueLayer cofounder Francesco Simoneschi said. “We want to provide developers with a simple, secure and universal API to access the bank infrastructure and enable the next wave of financial services.”
Currently, the TrueLayer developer platform supports tasks such as account verification, KYC processes and accessing transactional data for account aggregation, credit scoring and risk assessment. It is available in the U.K., but there are plans to expand into other EU countries later in 2018. And full PSD2 support is next on the road map.