Lloyds Banking Group (Lloyds) has today announced a strategic partnership with Form3, a cloud-native payments technology fintech, to accelerate its digital transformation and enhance the digital experience for customers.

Founded in 2016, Form3 is a leading payment technology fintech that focuses on simplifying payments architecture capabilities in a faster and more efficient manner, while providing support for the industry New Payments Architecture (NPA) initiative through its cloud-native Payments-as-a-Service for UK and European banks and fintechs.

The strategic partnership will enable Lloyds to investigate and develop a cloud-native Payments-as-a-Service platform which has the potential to significantly improve the Group’s payment processes, making them more efficient. The partnership with Form3 will aim to simplify Lloyds’ payments capabilities, aiming to create the basis for Lloyds’ response to the industry NPA initiative and provide support for enhanced data and new overlay services.

Supporting this partnership, Lloyds is also acquiring a minority equity stake in Form3 as part of its strategic investment round which is expected to complete in full next month.

Otto Benz, Director, Payments Technical Services at Lloyds Banking Group said, “Simplifying payments architecture while enhancing security and performance are critical to our digitisation of the Group. The potential of the cloud in payments is enormous and is firmly at the forefront of our strategy. We are committed to working with the most innovative technology providers, including Form3, to deliver a range of solutions that push the boundaries of what’s possible while reducing risk and providing customers with an improved digital experience.”

Michael Mueller, CEO at Form3 commented, “We believe this is an opportunity to support Lloyds’ transformation using our rapidly evolving technology. The partnership is breaking new ground in collaboration by enabling Lloyds to utilise best in class software built to harness the unique properties of the cloud.”