Property technology (proptech) has transformed how we buy, sell, and rent property. Platforms like online rental apps and digital mortgage brokers have made property transactions faster and more accessible. Despite this innovation, property managers, mortgage lenders, and letting and real estate agents are still losing time and money to:

• Fraudulent applications
• Poor underwriting decisions
• Unreliable payment collection

If left unresolved, these challenges can strain landlord-tenant relationships and negatively impact profitability over time.

But open banking can change this. By providing faster payments, reliable data, and smarter risk assessment processes, open banking can save proptechs time and money.

We’ll share key proptech challenges, how open banking solves them, common use cases, and how Yapily provides the foundations for proptech open banking solutions.

In this article, we cover:

• The fraud, risk and payment gaps challenging the property management and real estate sectors
• How open banking fills these gaps
• 5 real-world open banking examples for proptech
• What to look for in an open banking provider for proptechs
• How Yapily helps implement open banking for proptechs

Looking to add open banking to your proptech solution? Speak to experts who understand how to reach new markets and grow your business. Contact us.

The fraud, risk and payment gaps challenging the property management and real estate sectors

The global proptech market continues to grow strongly. According to Grand View Research:

• The UK market anticipates a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.3% from 2023 to 2030
• Europe looks to achieve $23,887.5 million in revenue and 16.1% CAGR by 2030
• Germany expects to grow by 15.4% during the same period

But proptechs can only grow as fast as their end customers: hospitality, property management and real estate operators. By addressing critical operational friction points that continue to hold these operators back, proptechs not only unlock exponential growth for their end customers but also drive their own success in the process.

1. Manually processing KYC and income verification increases costs and fraud risk

Property management companies are subject to rigid Know Your Customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) requirements. Yet many letting agents and mortgage lenders continue to process identity checks manually, which is time consuming, costly, and inaccurate.

They request PDF copies of passports and driver’s licences or proof of address, then match these against multiple databases. Mortgage lenders may also need to run KYC and AML on several parties, like guarantors, and not just the borrower. Days or weeks may pass before operators reach a decision.

Vetting potential tenants through traditional paper trails also makes operators vulnerable to increasing fraudulent activities.

A 2024 National Multi-family Housing Council survey found that over 90% of property operators experienced rental fraud in a 12-month span. These fraudulent housing applications included misrepresented information, fake payslips and income documentation, and identity theft.

2. Using incomplete financial data to assess risk and affordability

Like manual KYC and income verification, operators rely on paper payslips, bank statements and references to assess creditworthiness or rental affordability.

But fraudsters can easily falsify paper documentation and PDFs, causing inaccurate decision-making and increasing risk of financial losses for property owners.

Static payslips also provide only a partial view of an individual’s financial health, meaning businesses often base credit decisions on limited and outdated data.

3. Traditional payments risk being late or missed and are insecure

Payments made via credit cards or direct debits are slow. They take days to process before settling, which delays rent collection and impacts an operator’s cash flow. Direct debits also have limited visibility, making it difficult to know the status of a payment in real time.

Card payments have other downsides:

• Paying high processing fees. These affect an operator’s bottom line, whether they’re a small property management firm or a large online agency.
• Managing security risks. If data isn’t stored properly and the right cybersecurity measures aren’t in place, proptechs and their end customers risk data breaches and identity theft.
• Handling disputes and chargebacks, also known as “friendly fraud”. The hospitality sector saw a 134% spike in chargebacks in 2024, costing businesses millions in lost revenue. Friendly fraud is difficult to prevent in real time since it occurs post-transaction and often across borders.

Read more about open banking vs card networks

How open banking for proptechs fills the gaps

Open banking is a secure technical solution that enables data sharing between two parties and initiates instant account-to-account (A2A) transactions under the account holders’ consent. It enables digital-first payment initiation flows with fewer steps and errors, helping proptechs convert more users while enhancing the user experience (UX).

Proptech companies can embed open banking solutions to help their end customers overcome operational hurdles. Here’s how open banking can work for proptechs:

1. Provide income and identity verification in real time

Open banking provides a secure connection to a tenant’s bank data. This allows proptech businesses and their end customers to verify the account holder’s identity as well as financial information, like income, in real time.

Open banking also accesses an account holder’s financial data across multiple sources, offering a true picture of their financial situation.

By tapping into verified and up-to-date financial insights, property technology companies and their end customers can protect themselves against falsified data and fraudulent applications.

2. Enable accurate affordability and risk profiling

With open banking, proptechs gain automated access to transaction histories and credit activity across multiple financial accounts as well as instant KYC.

End customers can perform effective KYC via open banking by verifying identity directly through the tenant’s bank using Strong Customer Authentication (SCA), retrieving customer details, and validating account ownership, including

• Full name
• Account number and sort code
• Real-time account information

These details can be used to:

• Verify if the person accessing services is the same person who owns the bank account.
• Detect fraud risk
• Establish the customer’s financial profile

This enables a more complete overview to assess identity, affordability and creditworthiness for the mid to long-term letting sectors, such as purpose-built student accommodation, multi-family living, build to rent, and serviced living.

For example, if a potential tenant holds a current account, a savings account and a pension/retirement fund, open banking can connect to all three accounts to provide an up-to-date and accurate financial picture. This enables a multi-family operator to see if the tenant can afford annual rent and utility fees before approving their application.

Having access to real-time, consolidated data frees operators from manual paperwork and checks. They can make better, faster decisions and reduce approving high-risk profiles or fraudulent applications.

For a deeper understanding of how open banking improves affordability assessments, read our article on its impact on the lending industry

With access to real-time financial data, proptechs can also enable end customers to monitor changes in income, spending behaviour, or affordability throughout a tenancy or loan lifecycle, which supports early interventions and reduces defaults.

3. Ensure frictionless payments

Open banking’s instant A2A transfers eliminate costly intermediaries, slow processing, reduced transaction data visibility, and chargebacks.

Operators can collect rent or deposits in real time with no extra card fees. Since customers must grant consent to open up their data to a third party and initiate a payment, instant transfers are irreversible.

This is how open banking greatly reduces chargebacks and is a lower-risk option for operators:

• Open banking payments are highly secure and final because customers authorise payments directly through their bank using SCA.
• Traditional chargebacks don’t apply. Unlike card payments, which are pull-based and subject to card scheme chargeback rules, open banking payments are push-based and don’t involve intermediaries like Visa or Mastercard.
• Any disputes (e.g., for fraud or non-delivery) are handled manually through the merchant or bank, not through automatic chargeback mechanisms.

Open banking is also more secure than card payments. There is no need to store or share card details, reducing the risk of data breaches. The PSD2 directive regulates open banking, ensuring payments are secure and compliant.

Finally, visibility is no longer a concern with open banking, as both parties receive automatic notifications on the payment status.

With open banking, proptechs can improve the payment experience for their end customers and reduce risk for all.

5 real-world open banking examples for proptech

1. Rental onboarding.Property technology providers can use open banking to verify applications, assess affordability, and streamline approvals of new tenants for the build-to-rent, multi-family, and serviced-living sectors.

2. Rent collection automation. Proptechs can help reduce late or missed payments by offering scheduled A2A payments or pay by link—a unique link end-customers can generate and send to tenants to reduce late rental payments.

3. Deposit verification. Open banking confirms if tenants have sufficient funds for deposits in real time. Letting agents no longer need to ask for reference letters, bank statements, or pay slip PDFs.

4. Short-term rental payments.Hospitality operators can offer single account-to–account payments for instant settlements, lower processing fees, and reduced chargebacks.

5. Digital mortgage lending. Real estate lenders can analyse real-time income, spending behaviour, and financial obligations to make informed decisions in minutes, not days. Open banking for lenders also prevents fraud by verifying account ownership and detecting inconsistencies early in the application process.

What to look for in an open banking provider for proptechs

Here are a few questions to ask before partnering with an open banking provider for proptech firms.

Do they cover a wide range of banking institutions and types of accounts? Look for open banking providers with APIs that connect to both personal and business accounts. Business accounts can come in handy if you plan to offer open banking to the B2B real estate market, like corporate investment platforms.

Do they provide flexible, developer-friendly integration? Having complete control over the customer experience lets you customise your solution, while pre-built interfaces let you go to market quicker. Look for open banking providers that offer both so you can launch quickly as you work on tailoring your product around your brand.

Do they offer high uptime and real-time payment visibility? Proptechs’ end customers need to know when a prospective home buyer’s income changes, a tenant can no longer afford rent, or if unexpected downtime affects recurring rent payments.

Does the provider offer both data services and payments? Having an all-in-one solution can reduce integration complexity, risk and costs. Ideally, you want a solution with a single API connection that offers both.

How Yapily helps implement open banking for proptechs

Yapily is an open banking infrastructure platform. We help implement open banking into your business, whether you’re a payment service provider (PSP), payment infrastructure company, or a proptech.

As a PSP, you can offer your proptech end-customers real time account-to-account payments and data access, facilitating:

• Affordability and underwriting assessments
• Know your customer (KYC) checks
• Anti-money laundering (AML) screening
• Rental payments

As a proptech, you can gain real time insights into your end customers’ ability to pay rent or afford real estate investments.

Our customers have created over 3,500 applications and solutions across 19 countries, all powered by our open banking API. Top companies like Pleo, Adyen, and QuickBooks trust us for our robust technology and deep compliance expertise.

Here are a few reasons to partner with us for implementing open banking in the proptech industry.

Offer both data services and payments to reduce friction and enhance KYC in key European markets

As an authorised provider of open banking account information and payment initiation services (AIS and PIS), we offer data access and payments through a single API connection. This means you can:

• Reduce integration complexity by consolidating multiple APIs into one
• Simplify vendor relationships
• Avoid the lengthy process of applying for AIS and PIS authorisations

With Yapily, you can provide proptechs and end customers with real-time data on bank balances, financial transactions, and income to streamline KYC checks, application decision making, and fraud assessments. At the same time, you can offer instant payment initiation across Europe.

For example:

• Yapily Validate enables KYC checks and verification of bank account ownership. Auto-fill capabilities help end customers complete KYC faster, with fewer errors and less manual input.
• Yapily Data provides transaction information in real time to assess renter and tenant applications, build risk profiles, and prevent fraud.
• Yapily Payments allows for initiating multiple payment methods—single immediate, scheduled, bulk, and variable recurring payments (VRP).
• Pay By Link offers a payment link operators can generate on demand and send to tenants as reminders to prevent late rent or utility bill payments or recover overdue amounts.

You’ll also have ample coverage with Yapily. Access both consumer and business bank accounts in nearly** 2,000 financial institutions across 19 countries**. This includes key markets like the UK, France, and Germany, enabling you to scale your business across borders and offer solutions to the international proptech sector.

For example, a property management system (PMS) could use Yapily’s open banking API to verify income and run KYC in minutes for their serviced-living end customers vetting new tenants across the UK and France. This cuts onboarding time from up to 72 hours to under 10 minutes, enabling faster and more secure new tenant growth.

The PMS can also offer Yapily’s integrated Pay By Link solution so end customers can send overdue rent reminders, resulting in faster collection with fewer follow-ups.

Provide proptechs with enriched and aggregated data for more accurate profiling and risk checks with Yapily Data Plus

Real estate lenders and investment platforms manage greater risk. Yet they often use the applicant’s bank statements and salary documentation to understand their financial health. This leads to poor decision making and financial losses.

With Yapily, you’ll have an API that connects to many banks’ open banking APIs and different accounts (i.e., business, consumer, and wealth). This means we consolidate any applicant’s data that is spread across multiple financial institutions to improve end customers’ profiling.

For example, a letting agent can see if a potential tenant has a side hustle through a business account and earns unstable income through a consumer account. Without this consolidated data, the agent may have decided based on incomplete information, potentially leading to a poor fit or missed opportunity.

Yapily Data Plus also provides categorised and enriched data through AI and large language models (LLMs). Enriched data enables your end customers to make sense of a tenant’s or loan applicant’s data easily and assess affordability or creditworthiness accurately.

For instance, end customers gain insightful details, such as:

• In-depth account categorisation—over 90 categories for consumer accounts, such as incoming benefits and chargebacks, and 140+ for business accounts, like overdraft fees and mortgage repayments.
• Recurring transaction identification. Differentiate between repeat transactions (e.g., loan payment and income) and one-off payments, like groceries or e-commerce purchases, to understand financial habits.
• Payment processor. Understanding how transactions are processed (e.g., card, Stripe, PayPal) reveals side income or business use, which can help assess financial resilience or affordability.

Yapily’s enriched data tools reduce regulatory risk by helping lenders avoid poor credit decisions, meet AML compliance, and catch identity mismatches before approval.

Want to try before you buy? Sign up for a free account to test Yapily in our sandbox.

Get built-in compliance and security with a user interface you can customise as you scale

Many proptechs face bottlenecks when trying to scale operations securely and compliantly. Navigating regulatory complexity, ensuring data protection, and maintaining UX across markets is both time consuming, resource intensive and expensive.

Yapily offers top-tier security infrastructure with ISO certification and GDPR compliance. You can protect sensitive customer data while meeting stringent regulatory requirements for KYC and SCA, reducing risks.

We stress test our enterprise-ready API connections continuously to support secure scalability. You can ensure smooth payment processing even as your transaction volumes grow, without compromising performance or UX.

You can even scale your KYC checks and get expert support. Our team can help you integrate Yapily and enhance the onboarding process, so you can reduce time and costs while maintaining high security and regulatory adherence.

We offer both hosted flows and a white label solution. Use hosted flows to launch your proptech open banking solution quickly. In the meantime, build a white label solution to customise payment and KYC flows that feel native to your brand. This boosts trust and minimises drop offs.

With Yapily’s hosted flows and developer-friendly APIs, new proptech solutions can go to market faster without waiting on authorisations or lengthy builds.

Partner with Yapily as your open banking provider for proptechs

Open banking empowers all parties in the real estate industry to feel more confident in the renting, buying or lending process.

Proptechs fill critical gaps for real estate operators, becoming indispensable solutions. Operators minimise manual processes while making better financial assessments. Individuals and families can make faster, more secure rental payments or move into new homes with the confidence they’re protected from fraud and their finances are both accurate and secure.

With Yapily, you can embed open banking into proptech platforms and eliminate operational bottlenecks for the real estate industry.

Speak to one of our open banking experts about how we can help you.

FAQs: Open banking for proptechs

• How does open banking help proptechs reduce fraud?

Open banking enables proptechs to verify tenant identity and income directly through their bank, making it much harder for fraudsters to use fake documents. With Yapily’s API connections, proptechs can access real-time, verified financial data across nearly 2,000 banks to cut fraud risk.

• Can open banking speed up rental onboarding?

Yes. Instead of waiting days for manual checks, proptechs can use Yapily to verify affordability and complete KYC in minutes. This allows property managers and letting agents to onboard new tenants faster and reduce drop-offs.

• Is open banking secure enough for property payments?

Absolutely. Payments via Yapily are protected by Strong Customer Authentication (SCA), making them more secure than card transactions. Rent and deposit payments move directly from the tenant’s bank account, with no card data stored or shared.

• What types of payments can proptechs enable with open banking?

Using Yapily’s payment initiation services, proptechs can support single immediate payments, scheduled rent, bulk payments, and even variable recurring payments (VRP). This flexibility helps reduce late or missed payments.

• Why choose Yapily as an open banking provider for proptechs?

Yapily offers both account data and payment initiation through a single API, reducing integration complexity and cost. With broad European coverage, enriched financial data, and enterprise-grade compliance, Yapily provides the infrastructure proptechs need to scale securely.