London-based open banking FinTech Yapily has recently secured $51m in Series B funding to expand its open finance infrastructure across Europe, taking its total investment to date to $69m.
The funding round was led by Sapphire Ventures, which has invested in the likes of Currencycloud, LinkedIn and Wise (formerly TransferWise), and also included additional funding from existing investors Lakestar, HV Capital and Latitude, whose initial investment fuelled Yapily’s growth to becoming a leading banking infrastructure provider.
The company will use the funding to expand across Europe, extending open banking to cover 95% of the continent by the end of the year; and will continue to invest in its market-leading infrastructure to pave the way for open finance, creating financial inclusion for all.
Yapily will use the funding to enter new markets including France and Spain, while continuing to invest in existing markets (UK, Italy and Germany) where it has already established a strong presence with a rapidly increasing customer base. In 2022, Yapily plans to expand to markets beyond Europe as open finance regulation is implemented globally and consumers begin to benefit from an open financial ecosystem. The company will also continue to invest heavily in its product and people, with a focus on significantly growing the size of its engineering capabilities over the next 12 months.
Yapily provides a unified API from which customers can interact with third-party bank accounts directly from their own products.
Like many in the tech sector, the pandemic has actually proven beneficial to Yapily. During Covid-19, Yapily has experienced 3.5x customer growth as global commerce rapidly shifted towards online shopping. With bank transfers estimated to account for 8% of global e-commerce payments in 2020 according to Worldpay’s 2021 Global Payments Report, account-to-account payments have entered the mainstream; creating the perfect opportunity for open banking to become the go-to infrastructure underpinning digital payments globally.
Boasting of clients including Intuit QuickBooks, GoCardless, American Express, BUX, Volt, Moneyfarm and Vivid Money, Yapily covers more than 90% of accounts in major European countries. With the increased growth in e-commerce, along with the growth of fintech as a contactless service, Yapily has seen customer numbers grow three-and-a-half times compared to pre-pandemic levels.
Commenting on the round, Yapily CEO Stefano Vaccino said, “Europe is leading the world in open finance, and consumers and businesses will start to see more innovation from industries such as mortgages, pensions and insurance, with easier access to financial data and payments infrastructure. With more frameworks coming into effect around the globe, the time is right to double down on our growth plans by entering regulatory-led markets and enabling companies to build better and fairer financial products and services.”
Open finance links have to be approved by each customer, following an authentication process hosted by their financial institution. This creates trust, users can remove access from their usual banking app, but means third parties can act as proxies. This might be as simple as creating a unified interface for multiple accounts, to managing a complex investment and pension portfolio in a single app. Yapily’s infrastructure allows the necessary secure connections to be made.
Vaccino added, “Open Banking infrastructure is fundamental to how data and payments move between organisations worldwide, and it will shift the power to consumers for years to come. We are only starting to scratch the surface of what’s possible.”
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