__London, UK, 27 October 2021__: [Trilo](https://www.trilo.io/ "Trilo"), the UK-based payments startup, is today announcing it has partnered with open banking infrastructure provider [Yapily](https://www.yapily.com/ "Open Banking infrastructure"), to help businesses smoothen customer experience and supercharge their growth, by providing the simplest way to pay.

Businesses and merchants are losing out on revenue they rightfully own due to extortionate card interchange and transaction fees - [Visa, Mastercard and PayPal](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-58492953 "PayPal raises fees between UK and Europe") have all announced a rise in interchange fees this year. They’re at risk of losing customers if they don’t provide smooth checkout services. At a time when payments need to be simple so businesses can recover from the economic crisis, eliminating any inefficiencies that add complexity when it comes to payments is critical.

Trilo and Yapily have partnered to solve this payments problem by bringing the benefits of open banking to the wider retail market, enabling both online and point of sale payments through Trilo’s single payment platform.

Harnessing Yapily’s open banking infrastructure, Trilo empowers businesses to move away from cards and their fees, unlocking hidden revenue which would otherwise be eaten up in paying those fees. While Trilo is giving merchants more visibility on their customers, creating a data-rich ecosystem for merchants to connect more with their merchants. Freeing this cash and unlocking more insights enables them to reinvest in and enhance their product offerings, thereby increasing customer retention. Trilo further improves overall conversion rates for merchants by offering the smoothest checkout experience possible for all involved, all powered by Open Banking fuelled by Yapily. 

__Hamish Blythe, founder of Trilo said__, “We’re building a new ecosystem, leaving cards behind for good, and giving consumers and merchants the simplest, most beautiful experience possible. With Yapily’s extensive connection to banks, we have the ability to focus on what we do best - giving our customers a stellar experience.

“Yapily’s connectivity and reach across Europe is also supporting our ambitious expansion plans. We’re currently based in the UK, but we’re planning to expand our services overseas in the next year, and with Yapily, we’re one step closer to achieving this goal.”

__Stefano Vaccino, CEO of Yapily said__, “Trilo is a great example of a platform making a positive impact on helping businesses bounce back from an extremely difficult year. Its mission to eliminate cards, and unnecessary transaction fees, aligns perfectly with our goal to enable fintechs with fairer, faster and more secure payments. We’re excited about Trilo’s venture and we’re looking forward to it growing from strength to strength.” 

Yapily recently completed its Series-B fundraising round, which saw it secure $51m to extend open banking globally and revolutionise payments.

---

[__About Yapily__ ](https://www.yapily.com/ "Yapily")

Yapily is an open banking infrastructure provider, allowing companies to seamlessly access financial data and initiate payments. Designed and built for open finance, Yapily enables better and fairer financial products for everyone.

The company has raised $68M in funding to date, and provides infrastructure for industry leaders including American Express, Intuit Quickbooks, Moneyfarm, Volt, Vivid and BUX. Headquartered in London, UK, Yapily employs over 100 people and continues to scale rapidly. 

[__About Trilo__](https://www.trilo.io/ "Trilo")

Trilo is a new ecosystem connecting people closer than ever before. Whenever you’re shopping on the high street, scrolling online, or simply sending money to a friend you do it with the scan of a QR, or tap of a button. And when you’re shopping you’ll get a Boost every time.

Merchants using Trilo learn about their customers, what makes them tick, and how to drive up their sales. While Trilo has scrapped transaction fees for good, instead fueling a subscription model for powering their ecosystem.


Trilo and Yapily join forces to simplify payments & help businesses supercharge customer experience

Airbank provides a simple financial management solution that aggregates all bank accounts in one place and delivers more control, visibility, and automation to modern finance teams. Startups & SMBs use Airbank to access [bank accounts](https://www.yapily.com/open-banking-data/ "Account Initiation Service"), monitor cash flow in real-time, create reliable forecasts, and make business [payments](https://www.yapily.com/open-banking-payment-initiation/ "Payment Initiation Service").

Airbank matches bank transactions with merchant and category data to give finance teams complete visibility into revenues and expenses, thus helping make their lives easier with cash flow budgeting, forecasting, and reporting.

[Yapily's API](https://www.yapily.com/coverage/ "Yapily API") infrastructure provides Airbank users with a smooth, simple way to connect to more than 1,500 banks across the UK and Europe including Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank, Sparkassen, Volksbanken and neobanks. Airbank selected Yapily for its strong coverage in Europe, with a specific focus on Germany, France, Spain, and the UK. Yapily's European bank connectivity enables Airbank's customers to scale and grow across Europe, delivering forecast visibility anywhere they go.

The partnerhsip with Yapily alleviates Airbank's customers from spending time and resources managing their finances - giving them direct access to all the financial and contextual data they need in one tool. Historically, most businesses created budgets and cash flow forecasts in manual spreadsheets which is time-consuming and error-prone. With Airbank, customers save time and costs to focus on value-adding business tasks.

The partnership also enables Airbank's customers to use its data enrichment platform and transaction categorisation engine to turn the raw data from bank accounts into meaningful and actionable insights. Airbank reconciles account balances, forecasts financials and helps business owners make smarter business decisions every day. Harnessing Yapily's leading open banking infrastructure, Airbank can accelerate its adoption of digital banking services.

Airbank's vision is to simplify financial management for SMBs and to create a unified platform that helps its users with the full cycle of financial management from cash flow analysis and forecasting, to accounts receivables and payables management, and more. Airbank has raised $3m seed funding from leading VCs, and counts hundreds of users in Germany, Austria, France, Spain and the UK.

Open Banking has enabled smooth integrations with banks, which we utilize to offer richer banking and payments experiences for our users. We're building a business banking solution that connects all your financial accounts in one place. Our partnership with Yapily gives users a smooth and simple way to connect to thousands of banks in Europe, unlocking real-time insights into their cash flow. We eliminate the pains of finance admin so business owners can focus on what’s really important — growing their business.

__Christopher Zemina, Co-founder and CEO of Airbank__

Airbank helps simplify the daily routine of banking and finance management for small and medium sized businesses. By leveraging Yapily's open banking infrastructure, Airbank can provide actionable insights to businesses - at a time where it's needed. As a small yet fast growing company, Yapily is committed to supporting the SMB community and we are excited to see how Airbank delivers the benefits of open banking to many businesses across Europe.

Comment by __Chris Scheuermann, Commercial Lead DACH at Yapily__

**About Airbank**

Airbank is the next-generation multi-banking platform for startups and SMBs that puts all bank accounts into one place. Airbank offers bank account aggregation, cash flow management, multi-user permissions, and single sign-on, aiming to become the leading B2B payments provider for small and growing businesses. Incorporated in Berlin, Germany, Airbank is backed by leading entrepreneurs and investors. To learn more, visit [AirBank](http://joinairbank.com "AirBank").

**About Yapily** 

Yapily is an open banking infrastructure provider, allowing companies to seamlessly access financial data and initiate payments. Designed and built for Open Finance, Yapily enables better and fairer financial products for everyone. The company has raised $69.4m in funding to date, and provides infrastructure for industry leaders including American Express, Intuit Quickbooks, Vivid, Moneyfarm and BUX. Headquartered in London, UK, Yapily employs over 100 people and continues to scale rapidly.

Airbank selects Yapily to build a financial management solution for SMBs

__Paris, 16 September, 2021__ -- [Yapily](https://www.yapily.com/ "Yapily"), the European open banking infrastructure provider, today announces its expansion into France with significant investment, the opening of an office and appointment of an expert team. In entering the market, Yapily’s goal is to provide French banks and the country’s flourishing fintech sector with a platform for innovation and international expansion.

Ahead of its launch into France, Yapily had already developed considerable capabilities in the market. With 100% PSD2 connectivity, Yapily covers more than 85% of French bank accounts, enabling banks, fintech firms and other financial institutions to embed the power of open banking within their products and services. Vivid, the Berlin-based financial platform for investing, banking and saving, already uses Yapily to connect to bank accounts in France. 

Julien Lamour, Yapily’s Country Manager in France, said: “Increasingly, the public expect banks and other financial service providers to deliver the same levels of speed, convenience and personalisation found in mainstream mobile apps. Yapily’s proven expertise in open banking provides the foundation for banks and fintech firms to fulfil these expectations. Yapily infrastructure is scalable, allowing French companies to embed open banking within their products and create hyper-personalised services. With our international reach, we’re excited to help French businesses continue to innovate and expand into other European countries beyond the home market.” 

The launch of French operations closely follows Yapily’s recent completion of its [Series-B fundraising round](https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/21/yapily-raises-51-million-for-its-open-banking-api/ "Series B Fundraising"), which saw it secure $51m to extend open banking across Europe and revolutionise financial services through open finance, creating financial inclusion for all. The investment round had a markedly European flavour, led by Sapphire Ventures with existing investors Lakestar, HV Capital and LocalGlobe also taking part. 

Julien Lamour continued: “In recent years, the French fintech sector has seen an acceleration in investment and a surge in innovation. In moving data and payments between organisations, open banking initiatives will be crucial to traditional and new financial service providers realising their ambitions. Yapily’s focus on scalable and reliable open banking infrastructure will provide the foundation for French companies to create better and fairer financial products and services.”

Working alongside Julien Lamour to drive Yapily’s business in France will be Mohsen Dajani, Head of Sales, who brings valuable experience and expertise in the French fintech sector as the former country manager of Pagantis.


Yapily to Drive Innovation and Expansion for French Banks and FinTech as it arrives in market 


The pandemic turbo-charged digital transformation. Nowhere has this been more evident than it has been in financial services where we’ve seen a huge uptake in open banking adoption. So much so, it’s predicted that by 2024 the number of [open banking users worldwide will reach 63.8 million](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1228771/open-banking-users-worldwide/ "Open Banking users worldwide"). 

While we have seen global developments, this is only the beginning. There is so much scope for disruption across the board and we’re on the cusp of an open finance revolution. 

### The revolution is coming

Open finance will give [consumers complete control over their financial data](https://www.yapily.com/blog/why-apis-are-the-key-to-financial-control/ "Why API's are the key to financial control") and help millions of people make better habits when it comes to money and savings.

> It really will create true financial inclusion for all. 

In the near future, third party providers (TPPs), with their customers’ consent, will be able to gain access to mortgage, investment, insurance, savings, and pension data. With this insight, innovative companies - many of which don’t even exist yet - will provide tailored financial products that suit individual circumstances and needs. With such a wide pool of information about their customers’ financial lives, there will be an abundance of personalised services and products; which will act as a catalyst for innovation in the market, encouraging players to digitally transform to remain competitive and attract customers. 

### Coalitions will win the open finance battle

While we in the UK are one of the leaders in the open finance pack, there’s so much we can learn from others around the globe. Ultimately to help the revolution on its way, we need a centralised approach to open finance. Without frameworks or attractive commercial incentives in place, it’s unlikely the ecosystem will deliver open finance in a timely manner. We need a stronger sense of urgency.

Regulators will play a vital role. We only have to look across the pond to see how powerful they will be in making open finance a reality. [President Joe Biden issued a number of consumer-friendly executive orders](https://www.finextra.com/the-long-read/234/why-bidens-executive-order-is-a-green-light-for-us-open-banking "Biden’s Executive Order is a green light for US open banking") back in July that will pay real dividends for ensuring the US has a smooth transition to first open banking, and then open finance. 

We should also be looking to Australia and Canada for inspiration and learnings. Australia’s [Consumer Data Right](https://www.altfi.com/article/8170_the-altfi-view-on-the-future-of-open-banking-more-direction-less-debate "Australia’s open-by-default attitude is putting us to shame") provides Australians with the right to access all of their financial, utility and telecoms data. While the open-by-default approach took longer to implement than expected, the country now has a solid roadmap for fast-tracking open finance across the board. In Canada, they have a similar plan of action, [with a start date of 2023](https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/38608/canada-sets-2023-target-for-open-banking-regime "Canada sets 2023 target for open banking regime") already in place for their open banking roll-out. 

Back on home soil, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has promised to legislate that the industry be involved in Smart Data initiatives, including open finance. Additionally the Kalifa Review, commissioned by the Treasury, acknowledged the importance of open finance in determining the future of the fintech sector in the UK. The proposed alliance between industry and government will be absolutely necessary to deliver it. As the main regulator for most of the firms that would deliver this initiative, the FCA must take point as the main driving force. Not only does it have the expertise but also the powers to implement, supervise and enforce legislative requirements on the ecosystem. 

### The next step to global transformation

The next steps in the global open finance journey need to be based around a centralised, top-down approach. While we have seen good developments from regulators and industry bodies, this approach must come from a centralised industry figure in each country. Only then will companies be able to evolve from open banking, digitally transform and win the battle for open finance.

Global developments in open finance

__London, UK, 17 August 2021__: Yapily, the leading open banking infrastructure provider, today announces that Roland Selmer has joined the executive team as Chief Product Officer (CPO). 

Roland brings over two decades experience in building API first products at organisations operating in highly regulated markets, most recently for Vonage and Telefonica Digital, and will help develop Yapily’s developer focussed approach. 

Prior to joining Yapily, Roland was Senior Vice President for Product at business cloud communications provider Vonage (previously Nexmo), where he played a central role in Product Development and significantly growing API revenues. Prior to Vonage, Roland worked at European telco Telefónica Digital, where he helped Telefónica’s transformation into a Digital Telco.

Roland joins the team with demonstrative success in delivering successful products to market, and a genuine enthusiasm for scaling businesses. The appointment comes a month after Yapily announced its [Series B funding raise of $51m, led by Sapphire Ventures](https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/21/yapily-raises-51-million-for-its-open-banking-api/ "Yapily raises $51 million for its open banking API by focusing on infrastructure"), to expand across Europe and beyond as open finance regulation is implemented globally. It is part of Yapily’s commitment to continue to invest in its market-leading infrastructure to pave the way for open finance around the world, creating financial inclusion for all. 

Speaking about his appointment __Roland Selmer, Chief Product Officer for Yapily says__, “I’m really excited to join the Yapily team at this inflection point for both the company and the industry as a whole. We’re only at the nascent stages of an open finance revolution and there is so much scope for disruption across the board. Finance is such a critical enabler of any modern society and I’m looking forward to working with the Yapily team to make the best possible experience people want to use when it comes to open finance. 

“I see real similarities between what Yapily is doing with open finance today and the transformational journey we saw with the telcos 10 years ago where communications became democratised. As a pure infrastructure player whose  focus is on creating an amazing developer experience, Yapily’s ethos and culture reflects its dedicated path towards open finance and I’m delighted to be here.”

__Stefano Vaccino, Chief Executive Officer for Yapily says__, “We are delighted to welcome Roland to Yapily. We’re growing fast and have ambitious plans for the next few years. Roland joins us with a new perspective from an industry that has experienced similar disruption and will enable us to improve and expand our product offering in order to become the world’s leading infrastructure provider for open finance. Roland’s experience speaks for itself and I’m thrilled he’s decided to join us on this journey.”

The appointment comes at a pivotal time for the company, as it positions itself as a global player in the open finance space after announcing a number of strategic partnerships including American Express, Intuit Quickbooks, Vivid, Moneyfarm and BUX.

---

__About Yapily (yapily.com)__

Yapily is an Open Banking infrastructure provider, allowing companies to seamlessly access financial data and initiate payments. Designed and built for Open Finance, Yapily enables better and fairer financial products for everyone.

The company has raised $69.4m in funding to date, and provides infrastructure for industry leaders including American Express, Intuit Quickbooks, Vivid, Moneyfarm and BUX. Headquartered in London, UK, Yapily employs over 100 people and continues to scale rapidly. 


Yapily appoints new CPO to propel expansion & drive global product adoption

## What are Variable Recurring Payments (VRP)?

Variable Recurring Payments (VRP) are a huge milestone for open banking. This allows variable payment amounts to be collected on an ongoing basis and, when fully mandated, will act as a smarter, flexible version to direct debits. 

VRP allows authorised payment initiation service providers (PISPs) to make payments on the customer’s behalf, offering all the security benefits of an open banking single payment. They can vary in frequency and value and, most importantly, remove the friction from recurring Strong Customer Authentication (SCA).

[Get your introduction to VRPs](https://www.yapily.com/blog/introducing-variable-recurring-payments-open-banking) so you can understand the benefits, how it matches up against Direct Debits, and its use cases.

### Building a better savings habit using sweeping

VRP is an enabler for sweeping, allowing consumers to build and better manage their personal finances.

Money can be automatically transferred between a customer's own accounts, such as moving excess funds into an account where it can generate interest. Alternatively, transferring money to repay an overdraft or loan account.

Sweeping is the first mandated use case for VRP. The CMA9 banks have until January 2022 to implement sweeping, and Yapily will continue to work with customers, regulators, and industry bodies to pioneer this feature when it becomes available. 

### How do Variable Recurring Payments differ from Direct Debit payments?

Variable Recurring Payments are ‘push’ payments, initiated by the payer (the customer) and sent via a direct bank transfer to another account. Direct Debits are ‘pull’ payments, initiated by the payee (a business) to the payer and require a contractual agreement between the two parties.

> As a result, setting up Direct Debits can be a time consuming and costly process for businesses. 

[Learn more about how why VRPs are primed to takeover traditional Direct Debits.](https://www.yapily.com/blog/variable-recurring-payments-vs-direct-debit)

### How secure are Variable Recurring Payments?

VRP are ‘push’ payments and therefore subject to the same risks as push-payments fraud. However, safety and security is a top priority for the CMA, OBIE, and the open banking ecosystem. 

All open banking participants are required to design and implement appropriate mitigations for any risks as well as a clearly defined complaints process for customers. This therefore ensures customers benefit from the same [protections](https://www.yapily.com/blog/building-consumer-protection-in-open-banking-payments/ "Consumer Protection Open Banking Payments") when using sweeping services as they would for other payment methods, such as direct debits.

### How can Variable Recurring Payments be improved?

Although VRP for sweeping is a huge leap forward for both the industry and consumers, the current mandate is limiting. By enabling transfer of money between accounts held by the same person, we are missing out on an entire market - business. 

We actively consult with customers, prospective clients, and the wider ecosystem about the payment functionality made available with open banking. From our findings, there are perfect use cases that could be tied to a fully-fledged VRP solution but there are improvements to be made:

__Subscription based payments__

We have seen customers attempt to use domestic standing orders to collect payments which are limited to the time spent on payment creation and authorisation.

__Refunds__

Similar to [reverse payments](https://www.yapily.com/blog/what-are-reverse-payments-in-open-banking/ "Reverse Payments Open Banking"), there is no way to initiate a refund without the PISP consenting to the reversed payment in each refund case. VRP would allow this to happen if the PISP creates a VRP refund consent which they can use to pay their customers in the event of a refund. This also works nicely with subscriptions as PISPs could send an authorisation of £0.01 and return any subscription-based service using the refund consent. 

__Bulk payments__

VRP could make a complementary solution to [bulk payments](https://www.yapily.com/blog/open-banking-bulk-payments/ "Bulk Payments Open Banking"). Currently, bulk payments are mainly restricted to some corporate accounts but VRP could provide payment opportunities for customers to issue multiple payments to different payees from personal accounts.  

> The introduction of VRP is a critical enabler for open banking payments, but there is still work to be done.

Now you're aware of sweeping VRPs, it's time to get up to speed with non-sweeping VRPs, also known as premium or commercial VRPs. We've outlined everything to know in our introductory guide to Commercial VRPs, [so be sure to read it here.](https://www.yapily.com/blog/what-are-commercial-vrps)

At Yapily, we will continue to work with our customers, regulators and industry bodies to shed light on developing use cases and best practices when implementing this new and exciting payments feature.

Explore our [VRP product page](https://www.yapily.com/product/variable-recurring-payments), or [speak to one of our open banking experts today](https://www.yapily.com/company/get-started) so you can get started with Variable Recurring Payments.


A guide to Variable Recurring Payments in open banking 

__London, UK, 21 July 2021:__ [Yapily](https://yapily.com), the leading open banking infrastructure provider, today announces the first closing of its $51m Series B funding round (second closing subject to regulatory approvals), taking its total investment to date to $69m. The company will use the funding to expand across Europe, extending open banking to cover 95% of the continent by the end of the year; and will continue to invest in its market-leading infrastructure to pave the way for open finance, creating financial inclusion for all. 

The investment is led by [Sapphire Ventures](https://sapphireventures.com/), a leading venture capital firm that partners with visionary teams and venture funds to build companies of consequence. Primarily investing in Series B through IPO technology companies, Sapphire supports the growth of the API infrastructure category. Existing investors Lakestar, HV Capital and Latitude have also participated in the round. 

During Covid-19, Yapily has experienced 3.5x customer growth as global commerce rapidly shifted towards online shopping. With [bank transfers estimated to account for 8% of global e-commerce payments in 2020](https://www.fintechfutures.com/2021/03/state-of-play-account-to-account-a2a-payments/) according to Worldpay’s 2021 Global Payments Report, account-to-account payments have entered the mainstream; creating the perfect opportunity for open banking to become the go-to infrastructure underpinning digital payments globally.

Yapily will use the funding to enter new markets including France and Spain, while continuing to invest in existing markets (UK, Italy and Germany) where it has already established a strong presence with a rapidly increasing customer base. In 2022, Yapily will expand to markets beyond Europe as open finance regulation is implemented globally and consumers begin to benefit from an open financial ecosystem. The company will also continue to invest heavily in its product and people, with a focus on significantly growing the size of its engineering capabilities over the next 12 months.  

__Stefano Vaccino, CEO and Founder of Yapily said,__ “We are delighted with this strategic investment, demonstrating Yapily’s position at the heart of disrupting global financial infrastructure. As we got to know Sapphire Ventures, it was clear that they are hugely supportive of our strategic approach and share our vision of open finance. Open Banking infrastructure is fundamental to how data and payments move between organisations worldwide, and it will shift the power to consumers for years to come. We are only starting to scratch the surface of what’s possible.”

“Europe is leading the world in open finance, and consumers and businesses will start to see more innovation from industries such as mortgages, pensions and insurance, with easier access to financial data and payments infrastructure. With more frameworks coming into effect around the globe, the time is right to double down on our growth plans by entering regulatory-led markets and enabling companies to build better and fairer financial products and services.”

__Andreas Weiskam, Partner and Co-founder of Sapphire Ventures said,__ “We have been following open finance and the tremendous opportunity it presents in Europe and beyond for some time. FinTech is evolving from a vertical to a horizontal sector as companies in many verticals are moving to embed financial services into their offerings. This is a trend we believe is here to stay and relies on the development of a robust financial infrastructure layer. 

“The decision to invest in Yapily was clear: an infrastructure-first approach to deliver better and fairer financial services for everyone. Europe is a fast mover in embracing an open and API-centric model, and Yapily is at the epicentre of financial innovation to push the regulatory boundary and shape the future of the open economy.”

Harnessing Yapily’s infrastructure, innovative companies are embedding the power of open finance into their products and services. This includes improving customers’ payment experiences while saving money on payment fees; securely accessing balances, identity and transaction data; and streamlining account and digital wallet top ups with instant payments. 

Yapily is trusted to deliver faster, affordable and personalised products and services by innovative brands including Intuit QuickBooks, GoCardless, American Express, BUX, Volt, Moneyfarm and Vivid Money. As the invisible backbone for open banking, Yapily covers more than 90% of accounts in major European countries with deep open banking knowledge and expertise. 

---

__About [Yapily](https://yapily.com)__  

Yapily is an Open Banking infrastructure provider, allowing companies to seamlessly access financial data and initiate payments. Designed and built for Open Finance, Yapily enables better and fairer financial products for everyone.

The company has raised $68M in funding to date, and provides infrastructure for industry leaders including American Express, Intuit Quickbooks, Moneyfarm, Volt, Vivid and BUX. Headquartered in London, UK, Yapily employs over 90 people and continues to scale rapidly.

__About [Sapphire Ventures](https://www.sapphireventures.com)__

Sapphire Ventures is a leading venture capital firm that partners with visionary teams and venture funds to build companies of consequence. For nearly two decades, Sapphire has been investing capital, resources and expertise in innovative startups and technology-focused venture funds around the world. With more than $6.8B in AUM across Sapphire Ventures, Sapphire Partners and Sapphire Sport, and with team members in Austin, London, Palo Alto and San Francisco, Sapphire is well-positioned to help scale companies and venture funds, elevating them to become global category leaders. 


Yapily raises $51m in Series B funding to revolutionise financial services through Open Finance

Yapily, the leading open banking infrastructure provider, today announces the first closing of its $51m Series B funding round (second closing subject to regulatory approvals), taking its total investment to date to $69m. 

__London, UK, 13 July 2021:__ [Emma](https://emma-app.com/), the leading budgeting super app, is today announcing that it has partnered with Open Banking infrastructure provider [Yapily](https://yapily.com), to launch its new peer-to-peer (P2P) payments feature.

Until now, consumers across the UK have had to rely on bank transfers as a way of sending funds, which can often be unreliable and unsecure. In 2020 alone, [£479m was lost to bank transfer fraud](https://www.which.co.uk/news/2021/03/bank-transfer-fraud-losses-surge-to-479m-in-2020-thanks-to-the-pandemic/), up 5% compared to the previous year. At a time where payments need to be secure, eliminating any payment inefficiencies that increase the risk of fraud is critical. 

Through harnessing Yapily’s [Open Banking infrastructure](https://yapily.com), Emma’s new P2P feature makes transferring money easier than ever and far more secure, so consumers can manage their money with ease and get their finances on track, with no threat of fraud. In only a few clicks, Emma users can input an amount to transfer, select a bank account, and choose who they want to transfer money to and from. 

Emma is utilising Yapily’s API to enable its customers to request money and pay bills using its app. Bills can be settled in a matter of seconds, meaning the days of giving out account numbers and sort codes are officially over.

__Edoardo Moreni, CEO of Emma, said,__ “We’re on a mission to build a super app, one that empowers our customers to get their finances on track and make smarter financial decisions. 
With Yapily’s Open Banking capabilities, we’re one step further to achieving this goal as we can now offer our customers the value-added P2P service that makes transferring and requesting money far easier than ever before.”

__Stefano Vaccino, CEO of Yapily said,__ “Emma is a great example of an app supporting individuals financial wellbeing, making a positive impact to society. Its distinctive functionality and payment features give consumers greater access and ownership over their financial data. Emma’s mission aligns with our goal to create a world of greater financial wellbeing and we’re excited to continue supporting their drive towards becoming a super app for many financial products and services - stepping into the realms of Open Finance.”

Emma connects bank accounts to help customers budget, track spending and save money. Launched in 2018, Emma is one of the 25 most downloaded apps in the UK. The company currently counts 600,000 customers in the UK, US and Canada. The app has analysed more than £100bn+ worth of transaction value so far and 10% of the current monthly Open Banking traffic in the UK is attributed to Emma.

---

__About Yapily__
Yapily is an Open Banking infrastructure provider, allowing companies to seamlessly access financial data and initiate payments. Designed and built for Open Finance, Yapily enables better and fairer financial products for everyone.

The company has raised $18.4m in funding to date, and provides infrastructure for industry leaders including American Express, Intuit Quickbooks, Moneyfarm and BUX. Headquartered in London, UK, Yapily employs over 90 people and continues to scale rapidly. 

Emma and Yapily partner to make payments easier than ever before

Emma, the leading budgeting super app, is today announcing that it has partnered with Open Banking infrastructure provider Yapily, to launch its new peer-to-peer (P2P) payments feature.

__London, UK, 06 July 2021:__ [Nook](https://nook.io/), the trade collaboration platform, has today announced that it is partnering with Open Banking infrastructure provider [Yapily](https://yapily.com), to create the first trade collaboration platform that eliminates invoice fraud and offers secure bulk payments, for accountants and SMEs.

Many accountants and SMEs still rely on poorly integrated tools to manage their accounts payable process, resulting in inefficiencies and exposure to fraud. As a consequence, UK businesses spend up to £50 processing each invoice and are losing at least [£784 million](https://www.ukfinance.org.uk/system/files/Fraud%20The%20Facts%202021-%20FINAL.pdf) in invoice fraud annually.

Nook is solving this problem by seamlessly integrating invoice processing, approvals, secure payments, and account reconciliation. Through partnering with Yapily, Nook will further enhance its fraud protection and payments features.

Harnessing Yapily’s infrastructure, Nook’s fraud protection feature integrates Know Your Business (KYB) checks into the payables process to protect SMEs and accountants against invoice fraud. Leveraging Open Banking in this way, Nook customers can request verification from their suppliers by authenticating their bank account. Thereby minimising business risk by giving them assurances they are paying a genuine invoice and a verified supplier.

Nook also utilises Yapily’s distinctive bulk payments offering, to enable customers to effortlessly make single and bulk payments, creating a single invoice-to-payment workflow, saving hours of financial admin when making payment runs.

__Joe Lines, CEO of Nook said__, “We are thrilled to be working with Yapily who are the only Open Banking infrastructure provider who can offer what our customers demand. 

“Partnering with Yapily helps us solve meaningful challenges in the accounts payable and receivables processes for our customers, putting us at the forefront of this new wave of innovation in B2B payments. With Yapily’s first-class Open Banking infrastructure and its distinctive bulk payments offering, we can continue to make life easier for accountants and SMEs as they look to rebuild from a challenging year.”

__Stefano Vaccino, CEO of Yapily said,__ “It’s great to see more customers like Nook harnessing bulk payments to enable SMEs and accountants to remove inefficiencies and take advantage of the digital economy. The past year has been incredibly challenging, so it’s great to partner with companies like Nook who are providing SMEs and accountants with the digital solutions they need to recover and move forward with confidence. We look forward to seeing Nook’s platform grow from strength to strength.”

Yapily broke new ground as the first Open Banking infrastructure provider to integrate with seven financial institutions’ bulk payment APIs in the UK in June 2021. After launching in the UK, Yapily has since rolled out bulk payments for over 442 institutions across five countries -  including Germany and Italy - with plans for further expansion. 

Nook's vision is to simplify the way businesses trade, by creating a platform that ultimately replaces the need for businesses to exchange PDF documents. Its uniquely symmetrical platform helps its customers with both their accounts payables and receivables workflows - including processing, approving and paying bills, as well as getting paid faster and enforcing payment terms. It also eliminates tedious manual data entry with two-way syncing with accounting software - including Sage, Quickbooks and Xero. 

Nook has raised $1m pre-seed funding from leading VCs, and is currently in private beta, with plans to launch in the coming weeks. 

---

[__About Yapily__](https://yapily.com)
Yapily is an Open Banking infrastructure provider, allowing companies to seamlessly access financial data and initiate payments. Designed and built for Open Finance, Yapily enables better and fairer financial products for everyone.

The company has raised $18.4m in funding to date, and provides infrastructure for industry leaders including American Express, Intuit Quickbooks, Moneyfarm and BUX. Headquartered in London, UK, Yapily employs over 90 people and continues to scale rapidly. 

[__About Nook__](https://www.nook.io)
Founded in 2021, Nook is on a mission to simplify how businesses trade together. Its trade collaboration platform enables businesses to seamlessly exchange accounting data, enforce legal contracts and make payments. 

Nook is a London and Lisbon-based startup backed by top-tier VCs and Angel investors. The company has raised $1m in pre-seed funding to date. 

To join our waitlist and get access to the platform please visit www.nook.io.


Nook partners with Yapily to create the first trade collaboration platform for SMEs and accountants

Nook, the trade collaboration platform, has today announced that it is partnering with Open Banking infrastructure provider Yapily, to create the first trade collaboration platform.

Developing Bulk Payments for Open Banking has been really tricky. What might seem on the surface to be just a simple implementation of the required endpoints, has actually been a huge team effort, and massive learning curve for us as a leading Open Banking infrastructure provider. 

## Why is Open Banking Bulk Payments complicated?

In the UK, Bulk Payments are only available to business account holders, making it difficult to get hold of real accounts to test with. In addition, we know we're treading new ground here, with many financial institutions telling us we are the first Open Banking infrastructure provider to integrate with their Bulk Payment APIs. This means we’re in uncharted territory for implementing the functionality, so we’ve had to go back and forth with institutions highlighting bugs, inconsistencies in behaviour, and in many cases, pointing out where their documentation isn’t reflective of what’s in production. 

One of the key inconsistencies we noted was regarding trusted beneficiaries. A collection of banks require all payees to be trusted beneficiaries, however, this information can only be found by calling a separate endpoint for those banks. Now, for all of the banks that require it, we have successfully implemented this endpoint.

We’ve also completed additional rounds of testing of our Bulk Payments endpoints, live in production with real accounts. This was due to the variation in mandatory fields that banks had not clearly specified, meaning many requests would be rejected without any indication of what information was missing/wrong. Thanks to one of our clients, Comma who are enabling small business owners to pay all their bills with one click, we were able to work together to test Bulk Payments effectively. As a result, the extensive live testing has enabled us to add additional validation to requests to catch these edge cases and provide our customers with the information needed to make bulk payments a success.

## Bulk Payments in Europe

After going live with Bulk Payments in the UK, we received customer requests for the functionality further afield in places like Germany and Italy. European Bulk Payments is generally easier to implement due to the fact that bulk payments are available on personal accounts, making live testing a lot easier than in the UK. In Europe there are tighter standards that dictate only one file type can be accepted when initiating a bulk payment, which makes the variation from bank to bank a lot smaller in comparison to the UK.

We're pleased to make significant progress and can now offer Bulk Payments for over 442 institutions across 5 countries, including all the Sparkassen regional branches and Commerzbank in Germany; and Raiffeisenbank in Italy. As our coverage expands we hope there will be many more companies that are able to leverage this functionality. 

## In practice (for real customers) what difference will it make?

Our work to add the additional validation to Bulk Payments requests in the Yapily service, protects customers from the ambiguous API documentation provided by financial institutions. We’ve also been really lucky to work with pioneering clients like Comma - who have been able to help us iron out the wrinkles in the functionality, by working with us to extensively test with live accounts. This enabled our team to compare successful and unsuccessful requests, identifying any further inconsistencies in what each bank accepted.

By doing all this leg work up front, it means we can offer a more robust product to our customers wishing to make use of Bulk Payments.

## What are we working on next? 

We’re continuing to work with brilliant partners like Comma defining the value of Bulk Payments for the market. We will continue to broaden our coverage of Bulk Payments in the UK and Germany, helping more customers who build accounting software, payroll and invoice management solutions to take advantage of Open Banking.

Bulk Payments Update

Bulk Payments has been eagerly anticipated by the Open Banking community and by many of our customers. We're glad to be developing and delivering Open Banking Bulk Payments functionality in the UK and in Europe.

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