PayPal taps European open banking market with Tink, Finastra gets a CCO, Fiserv unveils a new solution for cardholders, and a Tamr survey studies the data readiness of financial institutions for their DX efforts
Funding
PayPal further boosts open banking investments with Tink
With Openbanking investments rising in the European marketOpens a new window , PayPal has made a second strategic investment in Tink. With this investment, PaypalOpens a new window will expand its business in Europeusing Tink’s open banking technology.
Tink and PayPal announced their partnershipOpens a new window in the summer of 2019, with a $11.2 million investment by Paypal. Back then, the partnership was aimed at account aggregation technology to improve product experiences for PayPal customers, as well as other Tink expansions. Now PayPal is leveraging Tink’s open banking and account aggregation services to build additional user experience for Payments Services Directive 2, or PSD2, which gives European customers more rights and access control over which third parties can access their financial data or make payments on their behalf. This second strategic investment iis part of Tink’s latest €90 million investmentOpens a new window round, announced in January 2020, but the exact sum was not disclosed.
Back in 2019, Daniel Kjellén, co-founder and CEO of Tink had said that the two major mega trends in banking were around digital transformation (moving from analog to digital) and from closed to open banking. This investment matters because the market needs more major players to back the open banking trend.
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People
Finastra gets a Chief Customer Officer with Neil Blagden
Fintech company Finastra expands its team of executive leaders with the appointmentOpens a new window of Neil Blagden to the office of Chief Customer Officer. He will look over customer success by overseeing Finastra’s design and delivery, and enable excellent experiences for its customers.
Before joining Finastra Blagden was Director of Customer Services, Operations & Digital at Vodafone UK. He has been a vocal advocate of building solutions that harness AI and data to provide greater insight for businesses – enabling them to better engage and deliver compelling and meaningful customer experiences.
Neil said, “I am passionate about customer experience, which has always been the key focus throughout my career, and I’m excited to bring my learnings to Finastra. The open innovation vision of the leadership team, and the value that the business places on ensuring customers are at the heart of everything, is inspiring. I’m looking forward to accelerating that drive and deepening these relationships.â€
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Product launches
Fiserv Deploys New Solution for Cardholders
FiservOpens a new window , a provider of technology solutions to the financial world, including banks, credit unions, and insurance companies has unveiled FlexLine AdvanceSM – a solution that enables cardholders to access their credits directly from their bank account funds. The solution is designed to be an alternative to traditional small-dollar loans that allow credit access without additional credit application, adjudication, or origination fees. Cardholders can use these funds to make payments at places that do not accept card payments.
This solution will make it easier for users to cope with the financial crisis amidst COVID-19. FlexLine AdvanceSM is beneficial for not just the users but also small businesses that need funds for survival.
The solution gives users the choice of interest rate, payment period, and loan amount and specifies the account for depositing the amount.
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Survey
Data readiness is a challenge for financial institutions seeking digital transformation, says Tamr report
Data management technology vendor Tamr conducted a survey analyzing the data readiness of financial institutions for digital transformation. The report surveyed around 300 CXOs of financial institutions that have a revenue of $1 billion or greater.
Here are some of the major findings:
– 69% of the surveyed executives agreed that data is important for digital transformation efforts
– 58% believe leveraging data is vital to the future success of the business
– 99% of the surveyed institutions have ongoing digital transformation efforts
– 47% feel they are comparable with competitors while 45% say they are ahead in their digital transformation efforts
– 63% report insufficient data support, saying that data is too vast to analyze
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