Pelican AI, a global provider of AI-powered payments and financial crime compliance solutions for banks and corporates, today announced that the Pelican API Interoperability Hub now offers open API connections to 2,187 banks across Europe. This is an important milestone for PSD2 connectivity Europe-wide with connectivity spanning 29 countries. The connected banks already in live production include 46 in the UK, 30 in Belgium, 13 in the Netherlands, 328 in Italy and 1,619 in Germany. Pelican plans to continue connecting up to 100 new banks every month to its API Interoperability Hub until it has coverage of 3,500 major banks across 35 countries.  It already offers more than 80% coverage of customer accounts across 10 European countries.

The Pelican API Interoperability Hub enables Third-Party Providers (TPPs) to access PSD2 Payment Initiation Services (PIS) and Account Information Services (AIS), and to seamlessly connect to over 2,000 financial institutions using any of the popular Open Banking APIs, like UK’s OBWG or the popular Berlin Group API regardless of whether they are native TPPs, or banks wishing to operate as TPPs in an Open Banking environment.

As a regulated TPP, Pelican’s subsidiary company, PelicanPay, is using the Pelican API Interoperability Hub to provide AIS and PIS solutions to SMEs, corporates and fintechs. PelicanPay offers a number of innovative digital apps that use the Pelican API Interoperability Hub, including invoice and salary payments and also collections. PelicanPay’s Merchant Pay app allows online shoppers to easily, with one click, pay for items purchased on mobile and desktop devices from any bank account in Europe. The PelicanPay Cash Reporting app allows customers to easily access balance and transaction information from their accounts with any bank in Europe. It fully supports PSD2, RTS and SCA standards. Most of the PelicanPay apps are already live with customers in the Netherlands.

Parth Desai, founder and CEO of Pelican, commented, “Pelican is continuously investing to widen the connectivity and provide innovative business solutions to banks, fintechs and corporates. Our API Interoperability Hub gives banks and TPPs the potential to reach up to 500 million customers across Europe and the UK using a single API like OBWG or Berlin Group. We are delivering a true pan-European service, removing all the technical complexity of connecting to customers’ accounts through multiple APIs and their differing standards. PelicanPay’s digital apps are a great example of how our API Interoperability Hub can be used to offer unique, real-time solutions that build on the vision of PSD2.”

To ensure good accessibility to bank accounts across Europe, Pelican is focusing on the top banks in each country, with a goal to provide coverage of over 80-90% accounts.

In comparison with other more limited API ‘aggregation’ hub approaches that restrict financial institutions to using a single, and often proprietary API, the Pelican API Interoperability solution is unique in enabling organisations to adopt any of the popular PSD2-compliant APIs and to connect to all European banks, regardless of the different popular API standards the banks may be using. Pelican provides seamless and risk-free interoperability between all accepted formats, acting as a conversion ‘switch’ that harmonises the differences between various APIs.

Pelican’s solution is Interoperable with Pelican’s instant payments solution – PelicanFast, and financial crime compliance solution, PelicanSecure, offering an end-to-end pan-European payments and compliance framework.