OP Financial Group and Token Join Forces to Develop New Fintech Solutions

  • Security and Compliance , Banking
  • 05.04.2017 12:45 pm

Token, Inc., a provider of a turnkey open banking platform for banks that enables them to quickly and cost-effectively comply with PSD2 and generate new revenue, today announces a partnership with OP Financial Group, the leading financial services and banking group in Finland.

The partnership with Token will enable OP Financial Group to innovate in the European open banking market and generate new revenue streams via future payment solutions.

Steve Kirsch, Founder and CEO, Token, comments: “Token is developing a global open banking ecosystem based on an open and secure payments and information API. Through our platform, OP Financial Group will have access to a fully operational API banking infrastructure which, when combined with the transformative attributes of programmable money, has the power to change the way the world transacts.”

OP Financial Group has a long history of technological innovation and early adoption. The OP Bank Group was the first financial services provider in Europe, and only second in the world, to offer online banking services, and OP Financial Group has an established lab program that collaborates with fintech start-ups to produce world-class digital services.

“Our partnership with Token reflects our mission to become a forerunner in the future of banking and payments,” comments Masa Peura, Director New Business, OP Financial Group. “We’re using Token’s open banking software to get an early foothold in a new era for payments. Together, API banking and programmable money have the potential to transform the way banks transact. In the short term, we are investigating interesting market opportunities with Token that put us in the driving seat and prepare us for the enactment of PSD2.”

Kristian Luoma, Head of OP Lab, OP Financial Group continues: “Perhaps the most important advantage of our partnership with Token is that it allows us to deliver better experiences to our customers faster than we could ourselves. With Token’s frictionless authentication programmed into each transaction, we can boost security and increase payment speed and convenience. Our collaboration with Token also exemplifies OP’s new way of working with start-ups in general. Through our Lab program, we’re able to move faster with partnerships like the one we have established with Token.”

Steve Kirsch added: “OP Financial Group has always been forward looking, and its culture of innovation makes it a perfect partner for Token. The capabilities that our software provides, combined with OP’s appetite for change, makes this a very powerful proposition indeed.”

Token provides the industry's simplest and most secure transaction-based open banking API. Banks use Token’s software to issue and redeem payment and account information authorisations as smart tokens, which can be programmed with any number of terms and conditions in accordance with the instructions of the account holder. This enables each smart token to be uniquely specified to the transaction it represents and enables value added services to be integrated in just the same manner. Sensitive account information never leaves the bank’s systems, masked or otherwise, vastly reducing the bank’s security vulnerabilities.

When PSD2, the revised European Directive on Payment Services, comes into force in January 2018 European banks will be required to grant third party providers access to their customers’ data. Banks must accomplish this task while ensuring their customers’ data remains secure throughout the process. Token not only delivers this, it goes one step further, enabling banks to create new sources of revenue from API access such as the execution of digital transactions and the fulfilment of account data requests. This new model puts banks in complete control of the digital transaction chain, lowering costs and mitigating the trend towards disintermediation from today’s payment-enabling third parties.

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