Got questions about open banking? We’ve got answers! To help you on your open banking journey, we’ve created this comprehensive list of open banking FAQs to help you navigate solutions.
FAQs about Yapily
Who’s Yapily?
Yapily’s an open banking infrastructure platform that solves a fundamental problem within financial services today: access. We were founded to challenge these structures and create a global open economy that works for everyone. Headquartered in London, Yapily’s raised $69.4M in funding to date and counts over 200 employees worldwide. And, with the acquisition of FinAPI, we’re now Europe’s largest open banking platform.
What differentiates Yapily from other open banking providers?
Fundamentally, it’s the quality of our infrastructure. As the UK’s only independent provider, we focus on helping our customers build innovative products for their customers. Our priority is to help you create the best experiences for your customers, and with Yapily’s hands-on engineers, product managers, and customer success teams, you’ll benefit from dedicated support every step of the journey.
Will my customer see the Yapily logo? Do you brand the user flows?
We focus on building invisible, precise API technology. Our white-label approach, and the fact that we're an infrastructure platform that exists behind the scenes, means your team has full control over the user experience within flows.
Is Yapily hiring at the moment?
Yep! We’re hiring talented people to join our team and help us achieve our global mission. Please check out our careers page - or drop us a line at join@yapily.com
Is Yapily’s API secure?
We take pride in our technical focus and lean approach. Yapily guarantees bank-grade encryption (following OpenID) across all channels, that are secured with OAuth2. Tokenisation underpins open banking. So, end consumers only share their consent - not credentials - meaning data is encrypted and secure. Yapily is ISO 27001:2013 certified.
What does Yapily do?
Yapily goes beyond borders to fulfil versatile use cases powered by open banking. Our suite of products includes Yapily Data, Yapily Validate, Yapily Payments, and Yapily Bulk Payments, along with add-ons and services like Yapily Connect, Yapily Virtual Accounts, and Yapily VRPs.
Why Yapily vs building integrations in-house?
It’s comparable to building your own servers when you can just use cloud-hosted providers…Maintaining just one bank integration is complicated and time-consuming. But maintaining thounsands is beyond complex, especially when banking relationships aren’t the main focus of your business. The good news? That’s our main focus.
We build, manage, monitor, and maintain global open banking connectivity so that our clients can focus their attention on their core products.
What solutions does Yapily offer?
Yapily’s product suite includes Yapily Data, Yapily Validate, Yapily Payments, and Yapily Bulk Payments, along with add-ons and services like Yapily Connect, Yapily Virtual Accounts, and Yapily VRPs. This enables customers to perform everything from identity verification and affordability checks to account-to-account payments and refunds. And, with our enrichment feature, customers can surface further insights. For example, income verification and balance prediction in a single step.
How can I contact Yapily?
We’re always eager to meet businesses to understand their needs. For commercial discussions, please email hello@yapily.com. You can also find us on LinkedIn and Twitter.
I need to connect to a bank Yapily doesn’t support. What next?
We’re keen to hear more about this. If it’s PSD2 compliant, we can integrate with it or migrate your existing channel (if you’re using screen scraping or a private API) until that bank’s API is publicly available.
FAQs about open banking
What is open banking?
Open banking enables third-party providers (TPPs) to access consumer banking information and initiate payments. It breaks down barriers to financial data, helping customers take back control of their money and make better financial decisions. What started as access to data has grown into a range of use cases, including affordability checks, account-to-account payments, and access to transactions, just to name a few.
How can service providers benefit from open banking?
Open banking APIs are the financial channels of the future. They enable financial data retrieval and payment initiation. Open banking significantly reduces the costs associated with traditional methods while enforcing customer data security and autonomy. What’s more, open banking provides a better user experience and the opportunity to offer tailored solutions to end users.
What is the Open Banking Implementation Entity?
The OBIE, otherwise known as Open Banking Limited, works with the CMA9 and other stakeholders to define and develop the required APIs, security and messaging standards that underpin Open Banking. Yapily works closely with the OBIE to ensure we are aligned with the latest standard, leading to the best possible experience for our customers.
What is the Open Banking Directory?
The Open Banking Directory is a list of regulated third-party providers that operate in the UK’s open banking ecosystem. By enrolling with the directory, account providers - such as banks, building societies, and payment companies - can verify the identity of regulated third-party providers. Once enrolled, you can manage the digital certificates and software statements you need to connect to account providers.
Which banks support open banking?
In the UK, the 9 largest banks are legally required to adopt the standards set by the OBIE, a large proportion of smaller banks and building societies across the country also support open banking. Yapily currently supports 2,000+ banks and institutions across 19 counties.
How does an open banking API work?
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) offer a way for two or more computer programs to “talk” to each other (i.e. share data). APIs are a type of software interface that provides a set of definitions, communication protocols, and tools to help developers easily build applications. Developers can create programs, tools and apps with the information provided by banks to offer tailored solutions to customers.
What is an open banking Primary Business Contact?
A formal business point of contact and senior member of staff nominated by an organisation to have access to the Open Banking Directory and responsible for systems and controls related to open banking. These contacts keep information up-to-date and allow banks, infrastructure providers, and TPPs to operate securely within the open banking ecosystem.
What are Third-Party Provider licences?
Before having regulated access to a bank’s customer data, Third-Party Providers need either an Account Information Service Provider (AISP) Licence to access customers' financial data with consent, or a Payment Initiation Service Provider (PISP) Licence to initiate payments on behalf of customers with consent.
Obtaining a licence can take up to 9 months. Whereas Yapily Connect gives you secure, regulated access to open banking and data through our infrastructure platform.
What are the benefits of open banking?
Open banking has enabled more innovative and competitive financial services for consumers and businesses. There are dozens of use cases, from enabling lenders to make fairer and more accurate credit assessments to helping people make smarter financial decisions when it comes to their saving, budgeting, and spending.
So, what’s open banking’s secret sauce? It enables financial service providers to move past outdated credit systems and bank statements, and instead make decisions based on actual, real-time financial information. But it’s not just data. Open banking is changing the way businesses and consumers make payments, too. Direct account-to-account payments enabled by open banking are quicker, easier, and more secure than traditional payment methods.
What is PSD2?
The Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) is an updated piece of legislation designed to compel payment service providers (PSPs) to improve the customer authentication process and regulate third-party involvement. PSD2 mandates that banks must make it possible for a third party to access financial information that was traditionally only available to the banks, resulting in the birth of open banking.
What are Third-Party Providers in open banking?
An organisation that is regulated to communicate between banks and consumers or businesses to either initiate payments or retrieve and analyse financial information through an API. Third-party providers fall into one of two groups: payment initiation service providers (PISPs) or account information service providers (AISPs). Sometimes they could be both. You can view the full list of TPPs on the Open Banking Directory.
How do I enrol with the Open Banking Directory?
Once you’ve filed your application with the FCA as an Account Information Service Provider (AISP), and/or Payment Initiation Service Provider (PISP), you’ll need to register directly with the Open Banking Implementation Entity itself.
How would you advise a firm that’s evaluating the FCA process to become an AISP/PISP in the UK?
The FCA authorisation process for registered AIS or PIS (or both) is not as complicated as you might think. The entire process takes anywhere between 2 and 5 months. Plus, the FCA is very collaborative so you don’t need to have everything in place before you start the application (although the sooner you start, the better). Need some help applying? We're here to offer support, contact hello@yapily.com.
What is the Open Banking Working Group?
Established in 2015 by the UK Treasury to explore shared data in finance, the Open Banking Working Group (OBWG) includes stakeholders from all of the relevant parties in open banking, including banks, TPPs, consumers, and open data groups.
What is an open banking Primary Technical Contact?
An individual nominated by their organisation to have access to the Open Banking Directory, they are also able to nominate other Directory technical users. Unlike the PBC the PTC is the main technical contact for any matter that concerns the Open Banking Directory, whereas the PBC is the point of contact for any business query.
What does bank coverage mean?
Bank coverage signifies how many bank connections a provider has integrated with. However, each provider defines their bank coverage differently, which can make it difficult for buyers to compare.
Fundamentally, a provider should be able to articulate not just the number of connections they have, but what percentage of banks and bank accounts (consumer and business) they cover in a given market, and how that influences conversion rates.