FinTech/API Efforts Gain Ground in Europe

Open banking has opened the path toward a number of banking/FinTech and digital partnerships leveraging APIs to speed innovations.

To that end, Neonomics, which provides open banking APIs with a focus on Europe, said this past week that it has linked with Horde, a FinTech that seeks to provide individuals with app-driven overviews of their financial position across credit cards and unsecured loans.

The companies said that the pact lets Horde gain access — through a single point — to the API network offered via Neonomics, with data across 1,300 banks. The unified AI approach, according to a release, helps streamline a fragmented open banking arena, and can help merchants make payments more efficient.

Neonomics’ CEO and founder Christoffer Andvig said in tandem with the release, “We are thrilled that Horde can now take full advantage of the open banking framework to expand their digital offerings and discover new revenue streams. We are confident that our vast European banking coverage will fuel their user growth, furthering beyond Norway.”

Elsewhere in Europe, in the United Kingdom, Travelex has debuted a B2B FinTech platform known as Travelex Business.  The company said that the API-led platform will let partners — including banks, retailers, credit unions and others — access payment and foreign exchange services through a single place.  Services include cash management and cross-border payment and currency conversion across APIs.  The services are offered across several core product suites, including Travelex Business Cash, Travelex Business Pay and Travelex Business Cloud.  The latter offering includes multi-currency processing.  The Travelex Business Digital developer platform provides access to business APIs so that partner firms can embed the functionalities into their own products and services.

Gareth Williams, chief product and innovation officer at Travelex, said in a release, “Critically, working with Finablr, we have adopted a modern engineering culture with self-organizing teams in order to create and iterate on a new and innovative suite of services … The developer center means that our customers and prospects can experiment with our capabilities at their own convenience.”

In France

In France, banking/FinTech partnerships were in evidence as traditional FI BNP Paribas announced a partnership aimed at boosting its foreign exchange offering.  The bank said it was working with Kantox to bring Kantox’s Dynamic Hedging tool to its corporate clients spanning Europe, the Middle East and Asia.   The hedging offering lets treasurers automate FX management functions.

“When it comes to managing foreign currency risk, we are seeing a real need for our corporate clients to improve efficiencies in forecasting their future cash flows, formalizing hedging practices and optimizing execution through automation,” added BNP Paribas co-head of corporate rates, FX and local markets sales EMEA Xavier Gallant in another statement. “BNP Paribas’ partnership with Kantox will offer corporate treasurers in EMEA the opportunity to access a fully automated hedging solution and ultimately improve their treasury processes.”  The BNP move follows one where Kantox last year had struck a collaboration with treasury management firm Bellin.  Under the terms of that agreement, the companies integrated Kantox’s FX management tool into Bellin’s Treasury as a Service offering.

“FX is much more about deciding how you want to manage risk, than executing transactions,” said Philippe Gelis, CEO and co-founder of Kantox. “A business must decide what their risk appetite is, how much risk they want to hedge, what kind of financial products they need. And then it’s also about execution and making sure you stick to your hedging policy.”