How pension fund Velliv pioneered open banking payments in Denmark

July 19, 2021 | Louise Basse

There’s no doubt that open banking is finally starting to mature as new use cases start to appear across different industries. 

This is the story of how one of the largest commercial pension companies in Denmark used our fast-track open banking platform, Aiia Pay, to create more convenient payment options for its customers. 

We talked with Christine Hunderup who’s the Chief Digital Officer at Velliv. Let’s hear what she said about the new feature, and how she believes open banking can be leveraged in the pensions industry.

A better way to make pension deposits 

With more than 360,000 customers, Velliv is Denmark’s third largest commercial pension company. Velliv is 100 percent customer owned, which means that the yearly surplus is returned to the customers at the end of the year through the Velliv Association. 

As Velliv strives to be at the forefront of digitisation, the pension company recently teamed up with our new payment platform, Aiia Pay, to enable customers to make account-to-account pension deposits directly from Velliv’s own self-service platform. 

CDO Christine Hunderup explains: 

“We have a lot of private customers who want to make extra deposits to their pension savingsat the end of the year. To make that process easier and more convenient, we teamed up with Aiia Pay to enable our customers to make that payment directly from our self-service platform. Before the integration with Aiia Pay, our customers would have to wait one day to receive an online invoice which they then had to pay through their online bank. Now customers simply log in to the platform and pay the amount they want to without having to go through a manual process beforehand.”

Credit cards vs account-to-account payments

But what’s the true benefit of choosing account-to-account payments to make your pension deposit as opposed to traditional card payments? 

According to Christine, it’s all about convenience and trust: 

“Our customers also have the opportunity to use their credit cards to make deposits to their pension funds. But as credit cards often have a limit of 100,000 DKK, it’s often better to do an account-to-account payment to make the deposit. With that, customers are able to deposit up to 500,000 DKK by paying directly with their bank account,” she says and continues: 

“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.”

A fast-track to live services 

When Velliv searched the market for an open banking partner that could deliver an account-to-account payment platform, it was important for the major pension company to find a partner that would take care of everything from licensing to a deep and wide coverage of all banks. And according to Christine, Aiia Pay was the best fit on the market due to its fast-track approach: 

“When there’s a player like Aiia Pay on the market, there’s no reason for us to build our own technology that can do what Aiia Pay does. Best of all, we were able to get started right away because we didn’t need to apply for any PSD2 licenses with the Danish FSA, as Aiia Pay already holds the right licenses,” she concludes. 

Curious to explore how you can use Aiia Pay to offer better payment options in your services? Drop us a line or visit Aiia Pay for more inspiration.