Fintech Insider Podcast by 11:FS
01:06:19 · Sarah Kocianski, Keri Gohman
[01:06:19] S0: but bank feeds have existed for a while but, you're now sort of taking advantage of open banking and the open API route. Is that correct? And you know, what is that does that make more sense for you to do it that way? [01:06:32] S13: Yeah. Listen. We're excited about open banking and bank feeds for a number of different reasons. I know a lot today as we've talked about open banking. We've talked about the idea that consumers now have ownership of their data which is awesome and it'll empower innovation across the ecosystem. We are definitely going to take advantage of open banking because it allows us to standardize the way we work. So it simplifies our life at zero but the reality is the mandate so far has been for the top tier banks. So we'll definitely take advantage there But in many cases where we have direct relationships, we're able to pull more data than just open banking which is really powerful. And of course because it'll take time to reach the whole ecosystem, it's important that we keep those bank feeds going, continue to make sure we have nice coverage and over time it'll really open up the market. I'd also add that coming from America, it's worth noting that The UK is taking the lead on this thinking globally and we're learn learn a ton about the innovation that unlocks and how it really changes the game for small business owners in the future and we can already see other countries beginning to adopt like Australia but we're quite excited about it.
01:07:38 · David M. Brear, Megan Caywood
[01:07:38] S10: It is amazing that actually we've seen globally the impact of the things that are happening both in Europe and The UK but Yeah. I feel like there's a challenger bank loving session over here kind of going on So to a certain what are your guys' thoughts? Obviously, you know, Megan, you've been, you know, real sort of active in the the sort of open banking space but how far do you think we've actually come since January? [01:07:59] S5: Yeah. So I think that this demonstrates one of the key elements which is the kind of seamless connection and secure way that customers can now share data between their banks and other key providers such as accounting software which is critical for businesses. For myself, I used to actually work at Xero pre Starling and I remember Rod telling the story about starting up Xero, one of the main pain points that people had was bank reconciliation. People would say, you know, they would rather have a root canal than do bank rec and they do it like once a year and then after zero made it so simple they would be doing it daily. So for us we had that same feedback from Starling customers saying I don't want to do some sort of manual file upload like I just want this to be like real time I want to connect it with the touch of a button. It just makes sense. So with the bank feeds API, when we plugged into that, it's something we've had huge amounts of positive kind of reflection from our customers with because it's enabling that seamless connectivity that people just expect now.
01:07:59 · Megan Caywood, David M. Brear
[01:07:59] S5: Yeah. So I think that this demonstrates one of the key elements which is the kind of seamless connection and secure way that customers can now share data between their banks and other key providers such as accounting software which is critical for businesses. For myself, I used to actually work at Xero pre Starling and I remember Rod telling the story about starting up Xero, one of the main pain points that people had was bank reconciliation. People would say, you know, they would rather have a root canal than do bank rec and they do it like once a year and then after zero made it so simple they would be doing it daily. So for us we had that same feedback from Starling customers saying I don't want to do some sort of manual file upload like I just want this to be like real time I want to connect it with the touch of a button. It just makes sense. So with the bank feeds API, when we plugged into that, it's something we've had huge amounts of positive kind of reflection from our customers with because it's enabling that seamless connectivity that people just expect now. [01:08:56] S10: What about you, Oliver? Obviously, you guys have been doing it at Tide. You've been doing it a lot with with APIs and both of you have kind of announced today that seems like a a good time to talk about the announcement. Absolutely.
01:09:07 · Oliver Prill
[01:09:07] S12: So, just one little interesting stat. It takes now nineteen seconds to connect your Tide account to the... To Xero. So it's actually really fast and highly usable. But maybe coming back to the question you've asked. So Tide, you know, we've gone through quite a journey and we are now have 1% market share. So one in a 100 SMEs in The UK now bank with Tide. Most of them are primary accounts and the important thing to realize is that SMEs have very different needs. So while we, I completely agree with Carrie, APIs in a way are enabler. Right? I think you called it the basic infrastructure. It's really for challenges like ourselves to think through what are the different use cases that different SMEs need. So we have a basic one that goes live that basically pushes the transactions. And you know you can do exactly as as Carrie says. However, at Tide you can already classify all your payments. And so we will give an option that you can actually real time not only classify them in app, it will automatically preset your accounting and you can choose to push that through. You can already today on Tide basically take a copy of your receipt and attach it to a payment. Why not push that through? We will be able to do that with a new bank bank API. So and I think this is also the bigger answer I think to your question about open banking versus the bank feed that API that Xero has created. Open banking is very standard. It only allows certain things to be done. The the API that Xero has, and I'm sure it will get developed further, is very rich. And it is for us, right, as challengers to really think through what are the use cases that can take maximum advantage. I mean, there are business owners that just want to classify it in app and it to go through and there are others, you know, that, you know, want a more basic version of that.
01:11:05 · Sarah Kocianski, Megan Caywood
[01:11:05] S0: So some of these use cases, what are we talking here guys? Like give us some examples. [01:11:09] S5: Yeah, well I think probably to this point what's really important to note is that open APIs and the power of the API economy does not need to be regulated in order to be successful and effective because what we're doing is actually far beyond the requirements by this regulation. So when starling built out a full set of open APIs, it was actually with the intent of mirroring all of our internal functionality externally. So there's so many use cases beyond what the regulation permits. So compliance is an innovation, it's just a starting point. I think it's great that they're opening up these APIs in order to enable things like a new way of integrating between the CMA nine and accounting software to enable account aggregation functionality and that's super exciting. I think the true power of APIs actually goes far beyond just the minimum requirements of the legislation we see today.
01:11:09 · Megan Caywood, David M. Brear
[01:11:09] S5: Yeah, well I think probably to this point what's really important to note is that open APIs and the power of the API economy does not need to be regulated in order to be successful and effective because what we're doing is actually far beyond the requirements by this regulation. So when starling built out a full set of open APIs, it was actually with the intent of mirroring all of our internal functionality externally. So there's so many use cases beyond what the regulation permits. So compliance is an innovation, it's just a starting point. I think it's great that they're opening up these APIs in order to enable things like a new way of integrating between the CMA nine and accounting software to enable account aggregation functionality and that's super exciting. I think the true power of APIs actually goes far beyond just the minimum requirements of the legislation we see today. [01:11:58] S10: I think that's a really interesting point because like you say, it's taken the regulation to get the really big organizations to start that momentum, arguably you guys are kind of now leading where that standard actually goes, like you say, going far beyond it. Where do you sort of see this going? Because there's so much opportunity and obviously with what you guys in Starling have been doing on the retail space, you're no stranger to sort of marketplaces and obviously you used to work at Xero as well so you're no stranger to marketplaces but where do you see this going?