Open banking was designed to revolutionise the world of finance. Instead of banks holding all the financial data – and therefore a lot of the power – consumers can now share their transaction data with trusted third-party providers to get access to account information services (AIS) and payment initiation services (PIS). For fast, frictionless payments and money transfers. For better financial advice and personalised offers. And for faster and more reliable access to credit, mortgages, payment plans and leasing opportunities.

Businesses, too, can benefit tremendously from open banking. With PIS, they can save up to 90% on their transaction costs and receive funds instantly. By providing better, more personalised advice, they can improve customer loyalty and the value of their services. And by accessing accurate, real-time information straight from the bank instead of working from scanned hard copies, they can speed up their affordability assessments, reduce their default risk and offer customers a better experience.

Yolt Technology Services (YTS) – the technology platform behind the successful Yolt consumer finance app and one of the first movers in open banking – now brings this power to businesses throughout Europe. With our powerful, secure API, we handle more than 26 million API calls per week. More than one billion in total since we made the first-ever open banking API connection in January 2018.

We’re the top open banking provider by coverage, accounting for 95% of bank accounts in the UK, as well as 90% in the Netherlands and France, and 80% in Italy, Spain, and Belgium. And, since we started as part of a major bank, security is in our DNA.

Account Information Services (AIS)

With YTS AIS, businesses can get access to accurate, complete transaction data to enhance user experience and increase the power of their services. Through a simple process that leverages the security of the bank itself, consumers give consent for their transaction and balance data to be shared with you. Then, this information can be used in many powerful ways.

One benefit for many financial service providers is that AIS consent can be used to quickly verify applicant identity. Because the bank-side authentication is so strong, only the rightful account owners are able to give consent. This takes an important waiting step out of customer onboarding for a credit application.

A second advantage is that AIS information comes straight from the bank and is always complete, accurate and machine-readable. No missing or duplicate transactions, no opportunity to tamper with the data to overrepresent income or hide debts and expenses, and no slow, cumbersome manual processing of hardcopy transaction printouts. Instead, credit decisioning becomes a breeze – which is better for you and your applicants. Especially if you use the powerful YTS data models for merchant identification, determining income and forecasting expenses.

Payment Initiation Services (PIS)

YTS PIS also leverages bank-side security, this time to give customers a secure, frictionless way to authorise online payments and transfers straight from their bank accounts. This is ideal both for merchants and for businesses with a subscription-based or monthly payment services, such as mortgage providers, credit providers and lessors. PIS works just as smoothly for single payments as for standing orders and can be integrated into your own app or website.

YTS PIS has a flat-fee structure that allows savings of up to 90% compared with credit cards. And because it works by authorising the transfer directly from the bank, it significantly reduces business risk: since there is no need to store sensitive credit card data, there is no risk of that data being stolen. PIS is highly secure: only the rightful account holder can authorise payments.

Get started quickly with our sandbox

From the very beginning of open banking, YTS worked closely with the Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE). Making, managing and maintaining connections with open banking APIs from many different banks throughout Europe has given us the expertise necessary to understand and quickly tackle the differences in any new open banking APIs we connect. In addition, we have made our own API easy to understand and connect to.

Looking to get started quickly? Our developer portal includes all the information you need to get started, including our API specification, sample code and instructions on how to access our free-of-charge sandbox that allow you to interact with a ‘virtual’ bank and build a prototype that can be used in your final product with only minimal changes.

Account Information Services (AIS)

Under Open Banking and PSD2, Account Information Services is how account holders can share their financial information with registered third-party providers. This includes transactions, balance information and identity. Businesses can use this information in a variety of valuable ways – for identification, analysis-based services, but also for account aggregation: simply showing someone all their transactions and balances in a single, smart overview. AIS is highly secure because the account holder needs to sign in to the bank itself to provide consent.

Customer transaction data can be the basis for tailored user insights, projections, risk underwriting and creditworthiness assessments. With the YTS API, you can be sure that the transaction and balance information you retrieve is complete, accurate and up to date. What’s more, we offer smart data models trained on data from more than 1.5 million registered Yolt app users. These algorithms identify merchants, income and upcoming expenses with over 95% accuracy even without further training.

Together, this makes the YTS ideal for any type of affordability assessment. Instead of needing to slowly process hardcopy information, AIS allows you to easily import and automatically classify machine-readable information that’s guaranteed to be accurate. As one of the few open banking providers, YTS only uses API connections, supporting a fast time to market and with the option to scale quickly.

Payment Initiation Services (PIS)

Under Open Banking and PSD2, Payment Initiation Services are how account holders can quickly and safely authorise online payments and bank transfers.

  • A user selects a bank from a list
  • The bank invites the user to sign in securely
  • The payment order is already pre-filled with amount, date and beneficiary
  • The user approves the transfer

This process takes advantage of bank-side security to provide a safe, trusted way to sign in, making it almost frictionless for users.

For merchants, subscription-based businesses and fintechs, PIS is a great addition to their various payment methods. It is a smooth experience for single payments, standing orders and request-to-pay, and can be invoked without the user having to leave your app or website.

YTS PIS has a flat-fee structure that allows savings of up to 90% compared to percentage-based methods, such as credit card. And because it works by authorising the transfer directly from the bank, it significantly reduces business risk: since there is no need to store sensitive credit card data, there is no risk of that data being stolen. PIS is highly secure: only the rightful account holder can authorise a payment. Funds are transferred almost instantly with UK Faster Payments or SEPA transfer.