Wrap up of 2020: Open banking is now open for all

December 17, 2020 | Louise Basse

As the year has come to an end, it’s time to look back at the year that has passed.

And although it’s safe to say that 2020 has been unlike anything we could have imagined, there’s a lot to celebrate, including our many customers that have used open banking to power their services.

Introducing Aiia: A fast-track to open banking

We can’t talk about the year without mentioning the launch of our fast-track open banking platform, Aiia. Because we believe open banking should be simple and clean to use for all businesses and consumers, we decided to build Aiia. 

With our new platform, everyone can make their open banking idea a reality within a few days without having to go through long application processes with the FSA, buy expensive security certificates or test banking APIs. Aiia does all of that – and much more – so everyone can experience the benefits of open banking. 

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. 

We describe these features as putting the power of an online bank directly into your service because that’s exactly what Aiia empowers you to do without having to run through an obstacle course. 

New partnerships and valued customers  

Of course the growth of our company and products wouldn’t have been possible without our amazing customers that have used our open banking products in 2020 to create more personalised and convenient services for their customers. 

In 2020, major financial institutions such as Lunar, Santander, Resurs Bank, OP Financial Group, Danske Bank, DNB and many more used our open banking platform to take their banking services to the next level with our payment initiation platform or account information services. We’re beyond excited that banks across the Nordics continue to leverage the great opportunities of open banking. 

But it wasn’t only the banking industry that took off at a high speed this year. In 2020, we’ve onboarded many new accounting system providers who’ve used open banking to reduce the risk of human errors by reducing manual processes significantly. While EG simplified accounting in a few steps, e-conomic launched the feature ‘smart bank’ to allow approximately 140,000 businesses to remove friction from their accounting tasks. And in Estonia, the online accounting platform SimplBooks used Aiia Pay and Aiia Data to create an all-in-one accounting platform that frees up time-consuming tasks for its users, their CEO, Jaanus Reismaa, says: 

“The partnership enables us to integrate financial data and payments directly in our accounting platform. With Aiia, you don’t have to manually enter data into your accounting platform anymore. It helps reduce human errors and other mistakes that are likely to happen when dealing with manual processes such as the invoice number, the amount, the client name and more.”

Removing friction from payments 

Finally, we’re happy to see our customers using our latest payment product, Aiia Pay. Built to empower any business to send or receive payments, Aiia Pay can be used by any industry, including e-commerce sites, accounting providers, lending platforms or pension funds. 

One of the pioneering companies to use Aiia Pay is one of the largest pension companies in Denmark, Velliv. As Velliv strives to be at the forefront of digitisation, the pension company recently started using Aiia Pay to empower customers to make account-to-account pension deposits directly from Velliv’s own self-service platform, the CDO, Christine Hunderup, says: 

“We already see that our customers prefer the account-to-account payment option that we offer with Aiia Pay in our platform. That’s a testimony to the high level of trust that both Velliv and Aiia Pay have. But it also says something about convenience, because it’s often easier to make an account-to-account deposit, as you don’t have to find your credit card and enter the card information.”

That’s a wrap for 2020. We wish all of you a Happy New Year and we look forward to an enriching 2021, where we can make open banking fully accessible for all European consumers and businesses. 

Are you considering the use of open banking as a part of your 2021 strategy? Drop us a line and let’s get in touch in 2021 to kick off your open banking journey with us.