Tink Teams With ConTe.it Prestiti to Improve Instant Lending

Tink has joined forces with Italian FinTech ConTe.it Prestiti to streamline loan applications.

According to a Tuesday (March 21) news release, ConTe.it Prestiti has embedded the Tink — an open banking platform — “Income Check” tool into its offering to provide more accurate affordability assessments.

Income Check lets banks and lenders to instantly verify consumers’ incomes through secure, real-time data from their bank account. With facial recognition or a single click, potential borrowers can agree to connecting their bank account for review.

“In the current macroeconomic environment, where financial inclusion is critical, Income Check is helping ConTe.it Prestiti customers obtain the financial services they are requesting,” the release said.

Tink says Income Check reduces the time and cost of applying for a loan and will allow ConTe.it Prestiti to roll out and expand its lending product across Italy.

PYMNTS profiled Tink earlier this year in a look at the rise of open banking in Europe following years of consolidation.

Tink, that report said, “has been on an open banking acquisition spree in recent years, absorbing the API connections and customer relationships of rival firms and relying on multi-million-euro takeovers to expand its reach in the region.”

That string of purchases began locally when it purchased Stockholm-based company Instantor in 2020. By the end of that year, the company had demonstrated its pan-European ambitions by adding Spain’s Eurobits and the U.K.-based OpenWorks to its stable.

Along the way, Tink also purchased Germany’s FinTecSystems only for the firm to be bought up by Visa for $2 billion in one of the largest open banking deals to date.

However, as noted here recently, open banking still hasn’t reached critical mass in the European Union (EU) and the U.K.

Speaking with PYMNTS’ Karen Webster, Bank of America Managing Director, Head of GTS Product Management EMEA Chris Jameson and The Bank of London Chief Markets Officer Shaunt Sarkissian said time, investment and legislation are needed for open banking to truly take off in the UK and EU.

It will take “a combination of public and private” efforts, Jameson said, with private companies building capabilities to meet client needs and governments passing legislation to drive adoption.

Banks, which have an edge when it comes to client relationships and a strong understanding of the regulatory environment, will also have a crucial role to play, Jameson added.

This could mean leveraging the positive network effects banking groups and associations like The Clearing House (TCH) and Early Warning Services (EWS) — owner of the Zelle P2P network — have as a way to push new solutions quickly.

“Why did Zelle have such critical mass and takeoff in the United States? It’s because it was run by [EWS] and was adopted very quickly by all the banks [which] had that power of incumbency to roll it out very quickly,” Sarkissian explained.