A piece of Product Vision 2020

December 18, 2019 | News

The open banking industry is still in its infancy and has yet to fully mature. And while there are rules and regulations scattered about, many of these mandates are deemed vague and convoluted, being left to personal interpretation. This has helped generate a myriad of opportunities to potentially revolutionise various industries that are somehow connected with the financial industry. To leverage this opportunity, however, understanding on how to approach partnerships correctly becomes tremendously important. It’s something the Nordic API Gateway team takes very seriously.

Finding the right balance between produce and protect

This infancy stage has also produced a maelstrom of customer demands that financial institutions have found challenging. They must develop ways of staying attractive to ensure customer acquisition and retention, while at the same time having to partner with fintechs. As technology and PSD2 continues to transform the industry, these customer demands seemingly become more dichotomous, putting pressure on institutions to find the right blend of convenience and confidence when offering their services.

PSD2 is basically an open bar for third parties, including banks, to take advantage of. The ones that act first will be the ones to get the most out of bank data and payment initiation with banks. This is also true for financial institutions acting as providers, as they can leverage third parties to sell their products and/or make their bank functionality available to third parties to create new revenue streams. And that’s where fintech innovation comes in.

We recently sat down with our Product Lead, Philip Thyssen, to find out what the team has in store for 2020, and how Nordic API Gateway plans on paving the way for both individuals and businesses to experience frictionless financial futures into the new year and beyond.

Evolve. Expand. Explore.

Nordic API Gateway is currently evolving our engagement within the accounting segment, and we see a huge opportunity to take part in building new tools that enhance company business operations. “Our main focus is to optimise the accounting and bookkeeping automation process by creating more data points,” explains Philip. “This allows for bookkeeping on the fly and reduces the feedback loop from forecasting to reality. We are also looking into creating cost-efficient ways to pay invoices via bank payments,” he adds. 

In the beginning, the Nordic API Gateway platform was considered a simple gateway, enabling third parties to create innovation on top of bank data. But our perception of the platform is gradually shifting toward viewing ourselves as more of a marketplace - a marketplace that providers, such as banks, have been forced to collaborate with due to the recent PSD2 directive. It’s no wonder why these providers are a bit cautious to do business, but the opportunities are vast.

Philip Thyssen sees banks as potential co-creators in a bigger, more beneficial collaboration that will usher in new and sustainable opportunities for the financial sector.

“Our goal is to expand our current offering by building premium APIs together with our partners to ensure that they also get their share of the cut,” he offers. “The most obvious place to start is by expounding on the standard offerings PSD2 mandates, that is transaction data and payments. This can result in banks becoming key enablers and the catalyst behind businesses running more efficiently.”

Philip adds that this endeavour also opens up entirely new opportunities within payments. “Banks can regain control of the power of payments by helping create low-cost, competitive alternatives to credit cards and other newly established payment services,” he concludes.

Creating a more competitive collaboration for both sides

Overall, the end goal at Nordic API Gateway is to create a win-win for both sides of our platform, customers and partners. To achieve this, we must make sure our customers have the ability to create high-value products via our platform. This, in turn, will assure that our partners, the providers, are contributing with something that creates value, which will ensure we can monetise both new products and functionality together.

Be sure to read the official kick-off to our newsletter - Issue #1 - coming out next month, where we'll expound on our company vision to extend frictionless financial futures to all in 2020 and beyond.

Do you see yourself benefiting from a collaboration with us? Please feel free to get in touch.