The Bank-FinTech Tie-Up Evolves

As bank-FinTech collaborations evolve, more traditional financial institutions (FIs) are not only implementing services and technologies developed by FinTech partners, but they’re also lending their own expertise to augment FinTech solutions.

Also seen in this week’s roundup of the latest in open banking and bank-FinTech collaborations is an emerging use of application programming interfaces (APIs) to enhance payments via both new and legacy rails.

PYMNTS rounds up the latest partnerships and initiatives below.

Orum Launches Real-Time Service For FIs

In an announcement sent to PYMNTS, financial platform Orum announced Thursday (Aug. 6) the rollout of its API-powered solution Foresight, a solution that enables banks and other FIs to move money in real time. The company highlighted the friction of the legacy ACH rail that can slow down transaction speeds, noting that its technology adds pre-authorization to ACH debit transactions and enables FIs to predict funds ability using intelligence technology.

“We are leaving behind siloed accounts and manual transactions and building towards fully automated and point-to-point money movement,” CEO and Founder Stephany Kirkpatrick said in a statement.

Bottomline Rolls Out Open Banking Service

Accounts payable (AP) and receivable (AR) technology firm Bottomline Technologies announced its open banking-powered service in the U.K. this week. The solution, Pay Direct, allows corporates to more seamlessly accept online payments directly from the sender’s bank account using the U.K.’s Faster Payments real-time payments system. In its announcement, Bottomline highlighted the enhanced payer experience, as well as the ability to reduce card fees for recipients, as key benefits of the solution.

Plaid, Galileo Boost ACH Efficiency

Also focused on the ACH rails are Plaid and Galileo, companies that announced a new partnership aimed at streamlining the bank authentication process via direct integration with bank data. Galileo clients will allow their customers to authorize ACH transfer transactions more efficiently by using Plaid’s technology, the firms noted, with Galileo CEO Clay Wilkes highlighting “the convenience of accessing all their bank information, from multiple banks and neobanks, from their financial apps” as key to today’s market.

Tyfone Connects FIs To Payrailz

Digital payments solution provider Payrailz has secured a reseller agreement with digital banking company Tyfone. The agreement means Tyfone can connect banks and credit unions to Payrailz’s offering to support further digitization of FIs’ payment services. Payrailz wields artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to help banks take advantage of data to anticipate customers’ payment needs, the firm noted.

Airwallex Taps Deutsche Bank

While banks are increasingly embracing FinTechs to enhance their own solutions, the latest bank-FinTech collaboration in Airwallex and Deutsche Bank sees the agreement in reverse. The companies recently announced that Airwallex will wield Deutsche Bank’s foreign exchange (FX) services and integrate them via API into its own offering. Targeting the Hong Kong and Japan markets, the companies aim to ease the complexities of global payments and FX management for Airwallex users by negating the need for users like online merchants and retailers to create bank accounts in the home markets of their own customers.

J.P. Morgan Enhances Virtual Cards Via Marqeta

In another bank-FinTech tie-up, J.P. Morgan Chase has announced plans to adopt technology offered by Marqeta to implement virtual commercial card offerings for its corporate customers. Together, the bank’s corporate clients will be able to instantly generate virtual cards linked to their mobile wallets including Apple Pay and Samsung Pay, with Marqeta highlighting its card tokenization technology as key to the new feature that integrates with its existing card processing offering.

“This opens up huge new possibilities for companies looking to streamline payments and provide innovative services to their people,” Marqeta’s Chief Revenue Officer Omri Dahan said in a statement.