__London, UK, 27 April 2021:__ [Osu](https://www.payosu.com/index.html), a new invoicing and payment-app for the self-employed, has today announced its partnership with leading Open Banking infrastructure provider [Yapily](https://yapily.com). The partnership will see Osu provide self-employed professionals with a way to receive payments without fees or settlement delays.  

There are four and a half million self-employed professionals in the UK and until now, many of these businesses have had to rely on time-consuming payment processes riddled with frustrating issues to manage their day-to-day finances. At a time when the self-employed are already taking a hit due to the pandemic, eliminating the cost of getting paid and automating tasks such as sending invoices, accepting payments, and chasing customers is critical to managing their cashflow. 

Through harnessing Yapily’s [Open Banking infrastructure](https://yapily.com), Osu is enabling a seamless payments experience for its customers. By building it’s payment request flow on top of Yapily’s API infrastructure, rather than integrating with a card-based payment service provider, Osu removes traditional pain points affecting the self-employed when it comes to payments, such as high fees, settlement delays, and error-prone bank transfers. 

Osu, which launched in 2020, gives freelancers and the self-employed access to cutting edge payment tools. Through its easy-to use payments app, Osu lightens the load for self-employed professionals across the UK, taking care of their business and helping them achieve more for their efforts: more earnings, more time, and more opportunity to build. A virtual PA working behind the scenes for the self-employed who aren’t big enough to have wider teams. 

To date, the Osu app has helped over 1,000 self-employed professionals build and grow their operations, assisting them to successfully accept hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of payments. With a recent seeding round raising more than £2m, Osu now plans to increase its customer base to 10,000 active users by the end of 2021.

__Noam Nevo, CEO & Co-founder of Osu commented,__ “Our aim has always been to help the self-employed and empower them when it comes to managing payments - which in the current climate is more important than ever. Many of our customers are one-man bands or micro-businesses without dedicated finance or admin teams. Our app allows the self-employed to receive payments without fees or settlement delays so that they can carry on with their day-to-day with no worry of losing out on vital funds. Yapily’s infrastructure enables this to happen, so it was a no-brainer to partner with them.”

“We’re planning on introducing a host of new business management features this year, and with support from Yapily, we believe our offering will continue to make life easier for the self-employed  as they look to rebuild from a challenging year.”

__Stefano Vaccino, CEO of Yapily said,__ “This partnership is an exciting development for Open Banking and demonstrates the benefits our infrastructure can bring to the changing - and growing - landscape of the self-employed. 

“The past year has been exceptionally challenging for the self-employed, so providing them with the right tools to alleviate financial stresses is critical for supporting their recovery. Open Banking removes hidden payment fees and allows these professionals to focus their time and effort on doing what they love.

“Our partnership with Osu very much aligns with our mission of driving financial inclusion. We’re looking forward to how this partnership develops into other innovative solutions that will, no doubt, prove invaluable to business owners.”

---

__About Yapily (yapily.com)__

Yapily is an enterprise connectivity provider, allowing companies to share financial data and access payment infrastructure. Designed and built for Open Finance, Yapily enables fairer and better 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 80 people and continues to scale rapidly. 

__About Osu (osu.com)__

Osu is a subscription-based invoicing and payment app for the self-employed. With instant payments, zero transaction fees, invoicing, automated reminders, and more features coming soon, Osu is helping empower the self-employed to take better control of their payment management. Users receive a 30-day free trial of the Osu app with no commitment and no need to provide any card details. After 30 days, they have a choice of 3 monthly plans of £4.99 (Lite), £9.99 (Standard), or £19.99 (Pro).      

Osu and Yapily enable the self-employed to focus on growth by eliminating payments fees, in new partnership.

Osu, a new invoicing and payment-app for the self-employed, has announced its partnership with leading Open Banking infrastructure provider Yapily. Providing self-employed professionals with a way to receive payments without fees or settlement delays. 

__London, UK, 20 April 2021:__ FinTech scale-up AccessPay is pioneering a new Treasury solution for corporates, using [Open Banking](https://yapily.com). Enabled by Yapily, a leading [Open Banking infrastructure](https://yapily.com) provider, it will provide thousands of UK businesses real-time visibility into their cash position and transaction flows.

The integration enables AccessPay users to connect and aggregate their entire corporate banking estate at the click of a button. This not only reduces the friction of using multiple systems, but significantly decreases the time-to-value for corporates from months to minutes. The ability to join together data from multiple connectivity channels, means AccessPay can deliver a global solution, whilst enhancing the user experience within the EEA.

Until now, some corporates relied on outdated and manual processes to reconcile payments and manage cash across several company accounts. This presented costly challenges when monitoring financial performance and cash management. As the world economy recovers from the impact of Covid-19, treasury teams need one centralised place to access reliable, secure financial data to support their businesses. 

Harnessing Yapily’s Open Banking infrastructure, AccessPay has expanded its cash management product to thousands of mid-market and enterprise businesses. This is the first use-case of Open Banking in corporate cash management to be brought to market and demonstrates how tech innovation is creating better services for businesses.

The collaboration between these two UK-based FinTechs will enable thousands of treasury and finance teams to make more informed financial decisions, as well as establishing reliable, automated processes around reconciliation, payroll and forecasting of company cash.

Yapily’s infrastructure will provide AccessPay’s customers, such as ITV, NSG and Imperial College London, with access to real-time banking data. This removes the need to manually download data using spreadsheets, which is error-prone, time-consuming and costly. Surfacing the transaction data that treasury operations teams need to successfully support their businesses in making the right financial decisions, within one single view. 

__Winston Pearson, Senior Product Manager at AccessPay said:__ “We are delighted to be working with Yapily, another fast-growth FinTech, to drive digital transformation in the corporate space. 

“Businesses and banks simply aren’t as connected as they should be in today’s global business landscape. Treasury and finance teams, the driving force of today’s corporate operations, need one central place to automate banking operations for complete visibility and control.

“With Yapily’s support and guidance, we’re able to expand our cash management solution to more of the market at this pace and scale. The integration has transformed a cumbersome process into a frictionless data flow for our customers. 

“Thanks to Yapily’s industry-leading infrastructure and strong relationships with banks across Europe, we’ve been able to deliver a solution previously reserved for the few, to the masses.”

__Stefano Vaccino, CEO of Yapily said:__ “Leveraging our Open Banking infrastructure in this way has enabled AccessPay to move faster and disrupt the corporate business landscape. This is an exciting development for Open Banking and demonstrates the benefits the technology brings to the ecosystem. 

“Through partnering with AccessPay, we’re continuing our mission to expand the reach of Open Banking to a wide range of businesses. We look forward to developing our partnership with AccessPay and helping them continue to scale to new heights.”

AccessPay’s cash management service, enhanced by Open Banking, has been launched to the mid-market in the UK, and a broader European roll-out is planned later this year. 

---

__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 80 people and continues to scale rapidly. 

__About [AccessPay](https://www.accesspay.com)__

AccessPay specialises in automating corporate banking operations. The platform is used by thousands of companies, banks and other FinTechs to automate their global payments, collections, and cash management processes. With 80 staff based in Manchester, AccessPay is one of the fastest growing B2B FinTechs in the UK.


AccessPay and Yapily partner to re-define corporate cash management

FinTech scale-up AccessPay is pioneering a new Treasury solution for corporates, enabled by Yapily, a leading Open Banking infrastructure provider. It will provide thousands of UK businesses real-time visibility into their cash position and transactions.

[Open banking](https://yapily.com) is transforming the way we do financial services, and Yapily is on a mission to provide the greatest coverage in Austria. So we’re pleased to announce that our [API infrastructure](https://yapily.com) is now available for local fintechs and businesses in Austria, providing seamless and secure access to financial data. This enables companies to expand their offering to Austrian customers, while leveraging the opportunities of open banking to create new and innovative products.

Although the Austrian fintech market is slightly smaller than some of the major European economies such as France and Germany, there are still many successful and innovative businesses that will look to enhance their products and services with [Open Banking infrastructure](https://yapily.com). Cashpresso, BitPanda and Kompany are just some of the successful fintech companies working across the [lending](https://yapily.com/solutions/lending) and blockchain verticals. 

Coverage in Austria uses the Berlin Group/Next Gen PSD2 API standard. This means each institution is bespoke in terms of its implementation, and we also see some differences in the way authentication models are used by banks within this group. To date, all of Yapily’s integrations have been based on the redirect flow as that has been the main requirement of Open Banking standards in the UK. Now that we are expanding across Europe where other authentication models exist we are building those integrations to unlock coverage with banks that don’t offer redirects, but instead offer embedded strong customer authentication (SCA) methods.

An embedded SCA approach means that payment or account access is initiated on behalf of the user (PSU) by the third party provider (TPP). The user shares the credentials with the TPP who passes this to the financial institutions (ASPSP), such as banks for authentication. This process doesn't have a user facing interface like redirect or decoupled flows, but happens on the back-end between the TPP and the ASPSP. The method by which the authentication happens varies from bank to bank, but it is most frequently facilitated via Push Notification, Text Message or by using a Transaction Authentication Number.

Many banks across Austria and Germany leverage the embedded flow authentication methods, which has allowed us to broaden our coverage in both of these markets. You can find a demo of the embedded flow [here](https://hub.yapily.com/guide1-ef.html).

As we move into Q2 we will be focussing on building out further coverage in the Nordic regions.


We're live in Austria!

Open banking is transforming the way we do financial services, and Yapily is on a mission to provide the greatest coverage in Austria. So we’re pleased to announce that our API infrastructure is now available for local fintechs and businesses in Austria.

[Open Banking](https://yapily.com) is transforming the way we do financial services, and Yapily is on a mission to provide the greatest coverage in France. So we’re pleased to announce that our API is now available for local fintechs and businesses in France, providing seamless and secure access to financial data and [payment infrastructure](https://yapily.com/solutions/payments). This enables companies to expand their offering to French customers, while leveraging the opportunities of [Open Banking](https://yapily.com/what-is-open-banking) to create new and innovative products.

France is already home to more than 1,200 innovative fintech companies including the likes of Epsor, Joko and Pennylane. We expect to see continued growth in payment providers and accountancy software companies that will inevitably drive further use and adoption of [Open Banking services](https://yapily.com). The potential is huge as we all navigate out of the pandemic, the need for further digitalisation is clear and Open Banking can pave the way to success for many businesses. 

France uses the ‘STET’ API standard, which is not to be confused with neighbouring countries that use the Berlin Group standard. As it stands the STET API standard supports current accounts and credit cards. When we building out coverage in France we built specific solutions to support:

### Pagination

There was no pagination implemented, so we've added our own solution. Effectively this meant putting pages into transaction responses for multiple pages of customer transactions, as opposed to having to call for pages of transactions separately. We also implemented a bespoke pagination for La Banque Postale. Typically La Banque Postale only returns 200 transactions for any 90 day period, but we have built functionality to check for this behaviour and then call for any additional transactions inside the given dates. This ensures that if there are more than 200 transactions present within a 90 day period they will all be returned to our clients.

### Consent flow

The consent flows for various banks in France only have consent access for between 30mins - 24-hours rather than traditional 90 days. We have developed a technical solution to this, where we refresh the refresh token at the interval required, so we can always generate access tokens whenever we need them. This prevents the need for re-authentication within such short time periods.

### Where next?

Now that we have developed great [Open Banking connectivity](https://yapily.com) in France, we will be looking to build our connectivity in Austria and into the Nordic regions!


The Yapily platform is live in France!

France is already home to more than 1,200 innovative fintech companies. We expect to see continued growth in payment providers and accountancy software companies that will inevitably drive further use and adoption of Open Banking services.

Gender diversity is a very important issue and at Yapily, we want to encourage as many women as we can to be a part of, what we believe, is an exciting fast growth sector. We interviewed some of the amazing women at Yapily, to share why they chose tech!

Despite the pandemic, the UK technology industry has continued to prosper. According to Tech Nation, the UK technology industry is worth over [£10 billion](https://technation.io/news/2019-a-record-year-for-uk-tech/#:~:text=%C3%97-,UK%20tech%20sector%20beats%20both%20US%20and,lead%20global%20growth%20in%202019&text=In%20what%20was%20another%20record,highest%20level%20in%20UK%20history.) and employs around 3 million people - very impressive statistics. However, just [19%](https://technation.io/insights/diversity-and-inclusion-in-uk-tech-companies/) of those employees are women! Gender diversity is a very important issue and at Yapily, we want to encourage as many women as we can to be a part of, what we believe, is an exciting fast growth sector.

Over the last week, we decided to interview some of the amazing women who work in our team, to gain insight into what they love about tech and why they chose to pursue a career in it. 

### Elizabeth Prendergast - Software Engineer

My first introduction to tech was an ‘Introduction to Programming’ course I had to take in my first year of university - I hated it! It wasn’t until I began working in consulting that I really started to get interested in technology. I slowly started getting involved in more technical consulting projects and started teaching myself how to code during my evenings and weekends. I fell in love with coding, and eventually I realised that I was enjoying it more than my actual work, so I decided to make the switch to software engineering. I quit my consulting job and enrolled in a 15 week coding bootcamp before starting with Yapily in February 2020. I’ve never looked back!

I love tech for so many reasons. It's such a fast-paced industry, so you never stop learning and never get bored. I live for that “rush” that you experience when you finally solve a really challenging problem or bug. I also really enjoy working with the people. Many people in tech end up here from a variety of backgrounds, so I find it incredibly refreshing to work with people who have so many different life experiences. 

### Meryem Alay - Technical Lead

Everything started at university. I remember the first code I wrote, thinking I was accomplishing something great. Especially when I first saw the command line, I was in love! I thought I was a hacker when I used the command line. I was sure during my university years that I would be a software developer.

When I got into business life, I realised that software development is not just about computers; human relations were as important as software development. This was also something I enjoyed. I still do my job very fondly. If I were born again, I would be a software developer. 

### Simona Matei - Software Engineer

In school my favourite subjects were always maths and sciences. I wrote my first lines of code when I was 10 as part of a Computer Science club I joined mostly so I could play computer games with my friends. I liked it and kept learning to program and by the time I went to university, studying Computer Science felt like the most natural thing to do. I went to study abroad and was one of the 20 or so female students in the Computer Science school at the time, from a total of over 200 students, but weirdly gender was never a factor in my career decision. I never even questioned it from a gender perspective simply because I never thought there were things that boys could do, that girls couldn't. If anything, the gender inequality just fuelled my determination.

These days I work as a back-end developer in a startup and I still love it, for plenty of reasons. It's one of the most exciting, fast-paced jobs out there! Literally every day brings new challenges, new things to learn, new puzzles to solve, sometimes you have to find solutions no one has ever come up with before. It requires creativity and a lot of curiosity. You get to work with a lot of talented individuals and genuinely impact people's lives with the tools that you build. Tech also offers a lot of opportunities, from the variety of industries, roles and environments you can work in, to being able to travel the world doing it. It's not always an easy job, sometimes it takes hours or days to make something work, but those "Aha!" moments are the best and they usually teach you the most.

### Becky Danks - Product Manager

My academic background is in research sciences, so I guess I’ve always loved knowing how things work, but never got into coding or computer engineering. Instead I first came across the world of tech from product roles in my graduate scheme at Nationwide Building Society. I’ve always had so many ideas about creating exciting products that customers would love. But, I quickly realised that in order to actually build those products, I needed to understand more about the technology behind it. For me, coding and engineering is all about the products you can create, and I love tech because it’s what takes a great idea from concept to reality.

Since joining Yapily, I’ve learnt so much about software engineering and Elizabeth (mentioned above) has been teaching me how to code. We try to catch up every fortnight and I have learnt so much about how things work! Last week I wrote my first script to make some (very small) production changes, and it was an amazing feeling. I’m not an engineer but learning the basics has definitely made me a better product manager. 

---

We all have a part to play in tackling the lack of diversity and inclusion in our industry. Hopefully you, or someone you know will find these stories interesting and inspiring. If you do find yourself reading this and think you know someone who would benefit from this too, please share this article with them. We appreciate your support, thank you.


Supporting women in tech

__London, UK, 27 January 2021:__ Leading enterprise connectivity platform Yapily has today announced that Iain McDougall has joined the executive team as Chief Commercial Officer (CCO). 

Iain brings over two decades of experience in leading the global expansion of high-growth technology companies, most recently at Stripe and Google, and will help drive Yapily’s mission to become the leading infrastructure platform for [Open Banking](https://yapily.com) across Europe and beyond. 

Yapily has a unique position in the Open Banking market, focussed solely on pure infrastructure to enable its clients -  businesses from scaleups to enterprise - to build Open Banking enabled products. 

Prior to joining Yapily, Iain was the Country Manager and Executive Director at Stripe, where he led the UK and Ireland as Stripe’s first and largest region outside the US. Playing a key role in defining Stripe’s strategy across Europe, Iain scaled and shaped teams to lead the business through periods of significant year-on-year growth. Prior to Stripe, Iain was the Head of Sales at Google Cloud in both the UK and Australia/New Zealand, where he played a key role in the early definition of the business before leading through periods of hyper-growth.

Iain joins the team with significant board level experience and demonstrative success in shaping culture and building teams. The appointment comes one month after [the company announced its Chief Operating Officer (COO), Martin Threakall](https://www.yapily.com/blog/yapily-appoints-new-coo-to-lead-european-expansion-and-supercharge-growth/), to lead Yapily’s European expansion. Prior to joining Yapily, Martin was Co-Founder and COO at Modulr, the leading Payments-as-a-Service platform.

Speaking about his appointment __Iain McDougall, Chief Commercial Officer for Yapily says,__ 
“I am incredibly excited to join Yapily at this pivotal moment for both the company and the industry. The opportunity for [Open Banking](https://yapily.com/what-is-open-banking) is immense. I see it very much, as where we were ten years ago with public cloud services - a generational change to the way an essential industry operates. And banking is just the start. The coming years will see similar transformations in terms of openness and transparency to many other industries. 

“Yapily is uniquely positioned to drive this change and capitalise on the opportunity through the purity of its technological approach. This is genuinely unique in the market and I could not be more delighted to be here.”

__Stefano Vaccino, Chief Executive Officer for Yapily says,__ “We are delighted to welcome Iain to the team. We are bringing together leading experts to supercharge Yapily’s growth and Iain’s  experience in global expansion and building strong like-minded teams, will help Yapily scale to new heights this year.”

The announcement comes as Yapily consolidates its position as the backbone of Open Banking across Europe, having recently launched its third European office in Lithuania. As well as announcing a number of strategic partnerships in 2020, including American Express, Moneyfarm and BUX.

---

__About Yapily__

Yapily is an enterprise API connectivity platform, allowing companies to share financial data and access payment infrastructure. Designed and built for Open Finance, Yapily enables fairer and better 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 75 people and continues to scale rapidly. 


Yapily appoints ex-Stripe & Google exec as new CCO to boost rapid growth across Europe

Leading enterprise connectivity platform Yapily has today announced that Iain McDougall has joined the executive team as Chief Commercial Officer (CCO). 

There have been great successes for [Open Banking in 2020](https://www.yapily.com/blog/open-banking-api-performance-2020/) despite the pandemic, and 2021 has a lot to offer in the form of Open Finance. At The FinTechTalents Virtual [Open Finance](https://www.yapily.com/blog/3-examples-of-what-open-finance-can-do-right-now/) 2020 event, we heard from many businesses across the financial sector, all sharing their experiences, lessons learnt from Open Banking and what they expect will come from the development of Open Finance. There were numerous recurring themes throughout the event regarding what needs to happen for Open Finance to become more mainstream. The mindset change needed to increase customer centric innovation, the importance of increasing awareness and trust of Open Finance, how standards and interoperability are key to success alongside the quality of the APIs.

## Developing a customer centric mindset for innovation

Open Finance provides a well needed shake up to the financial services industry, most importantly, it promotes a new mindset that supports customer centric innovation. This mindset change needs to happen to fully support the functionality that will ultimately benefit the end user. Industry leaders at this year's event passionately supported the idea that industry change is needed, to support a customer centric mindset that will solve inefficiencies in the market. Using Open Finance as a catalyst to create groundbreaking products and services that will support the end user and provide the best experience possible. It is an opportunity to be the change, as opposed to fighting the change which could lead to a market where the traditional bank is no longer as important as it once was.

## Increasing awareness and trust of Open Finance

Industry leaders supported the idea that [Open Banking](https://yapily.com/what-is-open-banking) and Open Finance are terms that consumers are not yet familiar with. Users often ask '[What is open finance?](https://www.yapily.com/blog/3-examples-of-what-open-finance-can-do-right-now/)' and lack experience and therefore confidence, with products and services which require them to engage with Open Banking journeys. This lack of awareness, experience and confidence means that there is a low level of trust. Speakers were in agreement that the goal for companies in the financial industry should be to tackle this as best we can, as a collective. Working together to promote the new products and services available to consumers and aiding them in the adoption of new user experiences.

Fortunately for the industry, [Open Banking payments](https://yapily.com/solutions/payments) already provides a way in which to introduce consumers to authentication flows and new user journeys. End users who are presented with the option to pay by bank, as opposed to card, will inevitably benefit from engaging with Open Banking leading to further awareness and trust. 

Click here to find out more about the benefits of [Open Banking payments](https://yapily.com/solutions/payments).

## Standards and interoperability are key to further adoption

Open Finance standards are in the early stages of development, with many industry leaders and governing bodies scoping out the next phase. A key talking point was the importance of these standards needing to ensure interoperability, so that the world can benefit from easier adoption of Open Finance and the innovative products and services that it will power. 

Experiences from the growth and development of [Open Banking](https://yapily.com) are an example of how varied standards have staggered the development of different markets. The key to further adoption is aligned standards that support interoperability, to make it easier for financial institutions and third parties who wish to take advantage of Open Finance. 

## The development and quality of APIs

Despite the reinforcement by regulators on API standards, banks were not built to share data, they were built to store it. [Open Banking APIs](https://yapily.com) need to support a function that banks are not used to, which has led to slower development and therefore a lower quality of API connectivity for third parties. However, there has been a strong foundation put in place to be built upon and banks should embrace new regulatory challenges to continue the growth seen in 2020. 

As Open Finance grows banks will need to see TPPs as potential customers as opposed to threats, working to develop a proposition to support the next wave of innovation. This is important for them to maintain relevancy and also develop new revenue streams based on future products and services built on the data they hold.

You can view the improvements that major banks have made through 2020 in our Open Banking [API performance roundup here](https://www.yapily.com/blog/open-banking-api-performance-2020/).

## Example use case for Open Finance development

In a world where communication around pensions is usually received by post, innovation is needed to bring further control back into the customers hands. Typically hard to manage, switch and consolidate - pensions are a valuable asset to the population and many are lost because of the accessibility issues. Open Finance changes this. Not just for pensions but for various financial products such as mortgages, investments and perhaps in some cases savings. By including more financial data sharing in the scope of regulation and API standards, consumers will have greater control and visibility over the finances in future. Allowing them to make better and more informed decisions regarding their finances.

Read more about the power of [Open Finance](https://www.yapily.com/blog/3-examples-of-what-open-finance-can-do-right-now/) here.


FinTechTalents Virtual Finance 2020 Roundup

At The FinTechTalents Virtual Open Finance 2020 event, we heard from many businesses across the financial sector, all sharing their experiences, lessons learnt from Open Banking and what they expect will come from the development of Open Finance.

[Yapily](https://yapily.com), a London-based fintech startup, has announced plans to set up in Vilnius, the company’s third European office. Yapily joins a growing number of UK fintechs including Revolut, Curve and Square that chose Lithuania as the location for its European hub. 

Yapily was established in 2017, shortly after the EU’s second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) granted third-party access to customer data of financial institutions. The legislation, which aims to stimulate competition in the financial services market, compelled providers of such services to innovate their API and [open banking](https://yapily.com) practices. Stefano Vaccino, Founder and CEO of Yapily, used his extensive experience in fintech and commercial banking to create Yapily, a platform that enables companies to take advantage of open banking.

Yapily connects businesses to banks and financial institutions using a single [open API](https://yapily.com). Using the platform, companies can access their customers’ account information and gain a holistic financial view without having to build and maintain hundreds of APIs of their own. Powered by a secure and regulated service, Yapily manages and facilitates the connection to fetch information and initiate payments while ensuring PSD2 compliance. 

“Yapily makes connecting to banks easy through sharing financial data and payments infrastructure,” explains Stefano Vaccino. “We connect you to thousands of banks using an [open banking API](https://yapily.com), taking care of the complexity behind the scenes”.

Yapily’s vision of [open banking](https://yapily.com/what-is-open-banking) has attracted significant investment. Since its inception, the company has raised $18.4 million in VC funding. Yapily’s investors include Holtzbrinck Ventures, LocalGlobe and Lakestar, an early investor in Skype, Spotify, Airbnb and Facebook as well as some of Europe’s biggest fintechs – Klarna and Revolut.

Yapily now allows companies to connect to more than 600 banks, providing 80% account coverage across 15 European countries. The company boasts customers ranging from innovative fintechs to Fortune 500 companies including American Express, IBM, Intuit Quickbooks, GoCardless and BUX. In the last 12 months, Yapily has tripled its headcount and currently employs 72 people in offices in the UK and Germany.

__According to Stefano Vaccino__, Yapily’s current focus is to penetrate the European market. “This involves building a scalable platform while accelerating testing capabilities for our European users”,” he says. 

Looking for a new European hub following the Brexit decision, Yapily considered several European locations, including Portugal and Germany. For the company, it was important to find a supportive regulator and fintech ecosystem. The expertise of Lithuanian developers; reputation of the country’s regulator; and a flourishing fintech scene all contributed to Yapily’s decision on Vilnius. It’s Lithuanian entity received regulatory license in December 2020, prior to the UK leaving the EU, and is now focused on its exciting expansion plans. 

“Outside of the UK, Lithuania has the second largest fintech hub in Europe,” says Stefano Vaccino. “The local regulator plays a positive role in the fintech ecosystem, allowing Yapily to become a part of it.”

The company will hire up to 30 people in Vilnius in the coming months. Yapily is currently recruiting for compliance, engineering, product and operations roles. 

“Open Banking will create a more competitive landscape of tailored financial services,” Mantas Katinas, Managing Director of Invest Lithuania, believes. “As more and more banks comply with the [PSD2](https://www.yapily.com/blog/psd2-screenscraping-apis/), Lithuania’s fintech community could be at the forefront of developing financial products leveraging this new access to data. Yapily’s choice to set up an office in Vilnius shows that Lithuania is an excellent base for cutting-edge fintechs.”


UK Open Banking fintech Yapily announces expansion in Vilnius

Yapily, a London-based fintech startup, has announced plans to set up in Vilnius, the company’s third European office. Yapily joins a growing number of UK fintechs that chose Lithuania as the location for a European hub following Brexit.

__London, December 2020:__ New data released by Yapily, the UK’s leading open banking network, has revealed how [open banking API connectivity](https://yapily.com) has become a top priority for banks in the UK as we head into 2021.

The data reveals that despite disruption to banking operations caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, banks had matured in their open banking development once the industry had entered Q3, with response times closing on those of the digitally native neo banks, such as Monzo which averages 211ms in its response time. 

Some of the UK’s top banking providers were analysed including: Santander UK, First Direct, Barclays, HSBC, Nationwide, M&S Bank, Lloyds, Halifax, Natwest, RBS and AIB. 

Of the banks with slow response times at the beginning of the year, these times had been dramatically reduced the further we progressed into 2020; the average response time across all banks was 1154ms in February, but by the time OBIE announced there were two million active users of open banking, the majority of banks had closed the margin between their connectivity and that of the digital first neo banks to an average of 540ms. 

__Commenting, Stefano Vaccino, CEO and founder of Yapily said:__ “With recent research from OBIE finding that 50% of the UK’s small businesses are using services from [open banking providers](https://yapily.com), having faster response times between banks and open banking partners are critical to deliver better services such as borrowing, accessing payments and more.”

The data showed that the most improved bank was M&S Bank, which managed to reduce its response time from 1314ms to 632ms, although compared to its competitors its final response time was slower. Elsewhere, AIB ended the year with the fastest response time of 288ms, reduced from 991ms. Natwest, RBS and Halifax started the year with some of the fastest times in 2020, and remained near the top of the table through to the end of the year.

The full list of banks analysed are below:

- AIB from 991ms to 288ms
- Natwest from 539ms to 331ms
- RBS reduced from 533ms to 334ms
- Halifax from 492ms to 472ms
- Lloyds from 529ms to 491ms
- Nationwide from 481ms to 580ms
- HSBC from 827ms to 592ms
- Barclays from 1180ms to 599ms
- First Direct from 1577ms to 604ms
- M&S Bank from 1314ms to 632ms
- Santander UK 1502ms to 1008ms

![Open Banking API performance review 2020](//images.ctfassets.net/3ndxs7efitel/1oR9hOaz5eoAJzu26diW72/90c5553dc11a932e8610e1570427a88a/static-4.png)

__Vaccino continues:__ “2020 was a difficult year for many. And there were fears that the momentum generated last year with Open Banking would be stunted, but our data provides confidence within the industry. [Open Banking](https://yapily.com/what-is-open-banking) is not only growing quickly, but it’s also being taken very seriously by traditional banks. And that’s shown by response times getting faster, indicating better connectivity.

“As we head into 2021, we expect open banking to really come into its own, as financial institutions look to launch and connect with new services aimed at giving customers better control, greater security and an improved experience.

“There will be a huge uplift in [Open Banking payments](https://yapily.com/solutions/payments) too, as merchants begin to understand the cost benefits that open banking can bring. With banks maturing in their approach to open banking, we’ll also see more movement towards open finance, which will lead to the growth of services geared towards offering more personalised and improved services such as lending, savings, insurance, pensions and more.”

__Notes on the data:__ 

The data was compiled and monitored throughout the year by Yapily’s API platform. The company’s open banking infrastructure is used by some of the world’s leading companies such as American Express, IBM, Intuit Quickbooks, IRIS and more. 

[See further live updates on the performance of APIs here.](https://apiscore.yapily.com/)

Open Banking API performance review 2020

Looking back at 2020, Open Banking API performance data shows that despite a tough year, Open Banking continued to grow. As we move into 2021 and towards Open Finance, this data provides a strong benchmark for improvement.

__8 December 2020:__ BUX, Europe’s largest neobroker, has announced it has extended its partnership with leading enterprise connectivity platform Yapily to France and Austria. The move will enable French and Austrian BUX Zero users, along with German users already taking advantage, to seamlessly fund their accounts and quickly build an investment portfolio.

Through extending the partnership, even more BUX Zero customers can now conveniently make deposits to their BUX Zero accounts from within their bank’s mobile banking app. Removing the friction involved in investing and opening access to bank accounts.

The market for fintech services has increased significantly across both France and Austria since the implementation of [PSD2](https://www.yapily.com/blog/psd2-screenscraping-apis/), to meet the demand from consumers who now expect a more accessible, and friction-free way to manage their finances. 

The extension of the BUX and Yapily partnership meets this growing demand head-on - allowing French and Austrian BUX Zero users to begin investing in the brands and companies they care about commission-free, in an easy, and intuitive way. With a simple and quick onboarding solution that benefits from the enhanced security of open banking already in place, funding an account is now equally as quick and simple.

Typically, French and Austrian BUX Zero users funded their accounts through bank transfers; taking on average one working day to arrive. The integration of Yapily’s [open banking API](https://yapily.com) enables BUX Zero to enhance even more of its customers’ experience by removing the friction, which speeds up the process in making deposits to their BUX Zero accounts. 

The expansion of the partnership further consolidates Yapily’s position in Europe as the backbone of open banking, and the infrastructure that partners need in order to take advantage of the benefits that open finance will bring. Yapily now has near total European coverage.  

__Nick Bortot, Founder & CEO of BUX said,__ "Efficiency and high usability are the core of BUX Zero, which we clearly prove by integrating the Yapily API. 

"We are constantly looking for innovations to make the investment experience of our digital native customers even easier. This new generation of investors needs an investment experience that fits their mobile lifestyle. BUX Zero is the first choice for these investors because it offers the right solution for this target group. In the long term, we want to launch BUX Zero throughout Europe and with Yapily, we can best adapt to local markets.”

__Stefano Vaccino, CEO of Yapily said,__ “We are pleased to announce the extension of our partnership with Bux to France, which is in line with our pan-European strategy. Drawing on our open banking expertise, we have rolled out connectivity in three countries - Germany, France and Austria - which allows regional Bux Zero users to receive a better in-app experience.

“Across Europe, we have seen increasing demand to provide robust infrastructure to support our customers in rolling out the benefits of open banking beyond their native market. We look forward to continuing our work with Bux across Europe.”

---

__About BUX (getbux.com)__

BUX makes it easy and affordable for Europeans to do more with their money. Since launching in 2014, BUX has made the markets accessible for young investors across 9 countries in Europe. BUX currently offers 3 apps that allow users to explore the financial markets including BUX Zero, the flagship platform that is making commission-free investing possible, allowing users to invest in the brands and companies they care about. BUX Zero is currently available in the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, France and Belgium. 

Headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, the company is backed by Holtzbrinck Ventures, Velocity Capital, Orange Growth Capital and Initial Capital.

__About Yapily (yapily.com)__

Yapily is an enterprise API connectivity platform, allowing companies to share financial data and access payment infrastructure. Designed and built for Open Finance, Yapily enables fairer and better 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 75 people and continues to scale rapidly. 


BUX and Yapily extend partnership into France and Austria

BUX has announced it has extended its partnership with leading enterprise connectivity platform Yapily to France and Austria. The move will enable French and Austrian users, to seamlessly fund their accounts and quickly build an investment portfolio.

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