Turnkey open banking platform provider, Token.io Limited, has been chosen by UK financial institution thinkmoney to deliver PSD2 compliance and open banking capabilities before the first Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) deadline in March.

thinkmoney is the innovative current account that offers customers budgeting and money management coaching. The firm is integrating TokenOS^TM into its banking platform to establish PSD2 compliance and enable the systems flexibility required for it to develop new value-added open banking services in the future, such as bank direct payments and account aggregation.

thinkmoney operates in a highly competitive, evolving financial market segment whose customers value help with budgeting and depend on fast, mobile access to banking services. thinkmoney customers rely on its current account as a hub to manage all their finances, allowing them total visibility of bills and payments to know exactly what they have available to spend. This means that customer experience must be seamless, with guaranteed access and intuitive self-service interfaces that help customers manage their money properly, so they can improve their credit score and enhance their financial wellbeing.

Michael Aldred, Managing Director at thinkmoney, comments: “With Token, we have a partner that can help us navigate the open banking landscape. We’re committed to simplicity and transparency and want to give our customers peace of mind that, with us, their data and money is in safe hands. Token has readied us for compliance at a fraction of the cost of other suppliers. We’re now able to look beyond PSD2 and can begin harnessing open banking to deliver new experiences and services to our customers.”

Following amendments to the RTS, European banks have until 14^th March 2019 to develop a dedicated interface ready for external testing by Payment Initiation Service Providers (PISPs) and Account Information Service Providers (AISPs). Those that are not ready must instead provide a contingency mechanism, such as a web-based online or mobile interface for TPP screen scraping.

Marten Nelson, Co-founder, Token, adds: "Banks across Europe now have three months to ready their interfaces for testing. Just because the regulatory deadline is looming, however, doesn’t mean they have to compromise on security or customer experience with shortcut options like screen scraping. thinkmoney’s long-term vision is to use open banking to deliver value to customers and support innovation. With TokenOS integrated, it need not worry about PSD2 compliance, and can focus on using the tools to develop new services instead. That’s the aim of our technology; to empower our customers to capitalise fully on open banking, free from the burdens of compliance and technical integration.”  

With TokenOS, thinkmoney can connect to any bank in Europe and has access to crypto-based security, open APIs and programmable money technology, together with the operational support, consent management, monitoring and reporting needed to succeed. The integration has relieved a variety of technical pain-points and is already delivering significant cost savings. Compared to alternative open banking solutions available, TokenOS is on average 70% less expensive to implement.

Before the RTS deadline, thinkmoney will have access to developer tools to build and access a range of new applications. This includes the ability to aggregate account information from multiple external sources, initiate bank direct payments and partner with developers to offer a frictionless and highly secure consumer payment experience, while also reducing the cost of payment acceptance.