Tuum, a leading next-generation core banking provider, and Numeral, a leading bank orchestration platform, today announce a strategic partnership to empower financial institutions and fintechs to efficiently launch and expand across Europe and the UK, leveraging a robust and resilient pan-European payment infrastructure and the rapid speed to market of new offerings and services enabled by both solutions.

The partnership between Tuum and Numeral introduces a modern core banking platform that seamlessly connects to the EU, UK, Nordics, and CEE payment rails via partner banks, enabled through a single API connection. Numeral's cutting-edge platform is specifically designed for fintechs and financial institutions building payment products on top of their banking partners. Through a single API and central dashboard, Numeral's platform enables seamless bank integrations, faster payments, and real-time data visibility on accounts and payments.

A recent survey conducted by Numeral on European consumers revealed that customers are 83% more likely to use financial services that offer local IBANs instead of foreign ones. Moreover, 25% of consumers reported experiencing IBAN discrimination when using a foreign IBAN. This discrimination negatively impacts customer trust for financial services that don’t offer local IBANs. 

With Numeral's extensive bank integrations and Tuum's modular core banking platform, financial institutions and fintechs can access EU and UK payment schemes such as SEPA, Bacs and FPS as indirect participants, by integrating with multiple UK and EU partner banks. This provides access to partner banks local virtual IBANs or issuing their own local IBANs fostering increased customer trust and combating IBAN discrimination effectively.

Building a resilient payment infrastructure is paramount for financial services companies. Recent instances of bank failures have highlighted the vulnerability of relying on a single partner bank. In such cases, if the partner bank's payment systems cease operating, businesses cannot send or receive payments on behalf of their customers.

Tuum and Numeral joint proposition enables financial institutions to partner with multiple banks and build a robust and resilient payment infrastructure without the need to build additional integrations and operate complex systems.  This approach mitigates the risks associated with relying solely on one bank and ensures uninterrupted payment services for customers.

Édouard Mandon, CEO of Numeral, stated, “Given how scale impacts unit economics in the fintech and financial services industry, building a pan-European payment infrastructure is critical for financial services and fintech companies to access a broader market, acquire more customers and achieve profitability. But doing so internally turns valuable resources away from core products, similar to how building a core banking system internally can be a risky, lengthy project. Tuum’s approach to modular core banking is completely aligned with ours: financial services companies should be able to build systems that correspond to their specific needs from readily available building blocks. That’s why we are delighted to announce our partnership with Tuum today.”

“Becoming pan-European is a game-changer for financial institutions. However, venturing into new geographies is not without its challenges. One is the strain on resources. Establishing operations across different countries demands substantial capital and operational expense,” comments Jean Souto, VP Global Partnerships of Tuum. “With Tuum and Numeral's joint proposition, companies can now harness the power of a modular core banking platform and a pan-European bank orchestration platform. This synergy enables them to efficiently launch their services, minimising resource requirements while rapidly scaling their operations throughout Europe and the UK.”