Introducing Aiia: Your fast track to open banking.

November 18, 2020 | Louise Basse

As our ever-changing world redefines who we are, what we do and how we do it, it’s always been our core belief that innovation shouldn’t be complex; it should be clean and simple.

But even though getting started with your open banking solution might seem like a breeze, in reality it’s often like running through an obstacle course. If you have an idea today, it can take up six months before you’re actually ready to launch it, and a lot shorter on cash.

That’s why we’re happy to introduce our new platform, Aiia. A platform that removes all obstacles from powering your solution with open banking so you can make your open banking idea a reality within days.  

Open banking with batteries included

To explain why we created Aiia, we’ll take a brief step back and look at the changes that have taken place in the financial industry over the last couple of years.

To create a more level playing field and give all businesses the same opportunity as financial institutions to create user-driven financial services, the EU introduced the open banking directive PSD2.

But to actually allow consumers to connect their financial data with the services they love, businesses need to go through a long process that includes the following tasks (and sometimes more):
 

1. Apply for a license as an account information service provider (AISP) with the FSA
2. If your business is approved to get a license, you need to passport that license into the markets you’re doing business in 
3. Buy your security certificates and pay fees for those every year 
4. Onboard the certificates for every bank you want to access 
5. Pay a yearly fee to the local FSA to keep the license and submit your annual report twice a year 
6. Test banking APIs and report any mistakes to the FSA 
7. If you manage to complete the above, you’re finally able to create your own open banking solution.  

As you might imagine, this can be an extremely time-consuming and expensive process that most businesses struggle to complete. To get going without delay, we’ve created an open banking platform with batteries included, our CEO, Rune Mai, explains:  

“With Aiia, we’re doing an open banking with batteries included model. There’s nothing sadder than spending hours unpacking a product that’s tied to the packaging only to realise that it needs 10 batteries that aren’t included. That’s exactly what open banking is today to many businesses that want to get going with the PSD2-enabled opportunities for their customers straightaway. With Aiia, you get to interact with the product right out of the box and basically skip the hassle of lengthy and ongoing registration processes and expenses,” he says. 

Put the power of an online bank into your service

There’s no doubt that the open banking movement is starting to mature as new use cases appear. Now, lenders can create better credit scoring models, accounting system providers can automate workflows and reconciliation tasks, and commerce businesses can build personalised loyalty programmes for their customers.  

So, how does Aiia support that movement and those new use cases?

Aiia empowers any business to connect to their users’ financial data with their consent.

Our other new product feature, Aiia Pay, enables anyone with a bank account to make instant payments directly from your service.

We describe these features as putting the power of an online bank directly into your service because that’s exactly what Aiia Data and Aiia Pay empowers you to do. 

While Aiia Data enables any business to automate workflows, reduce the risk of human error and create more personalised services, Aiia Pay supports any business that looks to integrate instant payments from their service – whether you’re an online merchant or an accounting system provider.

The Aiia Hub hands the control back to the customer

To make sure your customers have full control over what services they’re sharing their financial data with, we’ve created the Aiia Hub, which provides complete transparency for your customers.

Here, users are able to stay in full control by always having an accurate, up-to-date overview of which bank accounts they have shared with which services through Aiia Data. In the hub, users also have the option to add or remove accounts and revoke shared data from a service.

The hub also solves another obstacle of PSD2, which requires all users to re-authenticate every 90 days in every service they are connected to – and with every bank they are connecting to. In the Aiia Hub, we enable users to only re-authenticate once, regardless of how many services they have connected to via Aiia.

Best of all? Signing up to Aiia is free and requires nothing more than an email.

Want to know more about how you can use Aiia as your fast track to open banking? See how you can power your use case with Aiia Data and Aiia Pay, or drop us a line if you have any questions.