BBVA has become the first bank in the U.S. to offer a full suite of Banking as a Service products after its BBVA Open Platform program moved out of beta.
The move will see the bank offer a large range of banking products and services to businesses who want to offer their customers financial products without taking on full banking themselves. BBVA’s Open Platform initiative enables third parties to easily integrate payments and complementary banking services into their own business models to create seamless user experiences.
pen Platform works by allowing third parties, once they pass strict compliance and security checks, to access through APIs (Application Protocol Interfaces) a range of services the bank can offer.
BBVA’s Banking as a Service solution uniquely allows companies to connect into a core digital banking platform, through which they can access APIs including the Move Money, Identity Verification, Account Origination, and Card Issuance services to name a few.
It is hoped that in the future this kind of initiative will enable companies to bring great financial technology ideas to life for both retail and enterprise clients across industry verticals, as it offers a fast and easy solution for innovators to bring new ideas and products to market. The Open Platform technology is already being used by the likes of Simple and digit.co.
Following a six-month beta period, which has already seen dozens of businesses register their interest in working with BBVA, the service has now gone live more widely. In addition, the Open Platform team also operates a sandbox testing environment, where companies interested in developing solutions linked to banking’s open APIs can work through their proposal before they fully sign up for launch.