Atom bank and Plaid to roll out Open Banking services to customers

By Megha Bhattacharya

UK’s app-based bank Atom today announced a collaboration with Open Finance platform Plaid in a bid to power the launch of open banking services to its customers along with a streamlined loan application journey and faster decision making. The collaboration will enable Plaid’s customers to share their banking data securely with Atom.

Edward Twiddy Chief Customer Officer at Atom bank said, “We always want to make things simple and easy for our customers and take away the hassle and frustration. This is why we’re so excited to work with Plaid as part of an exciting programme of new business banking product launches and service improvements in 2021. We’ve tripled the business lending on our balance sheet in the last 12 months whilst making big improvements to our propositions and services, and with partners such as Plaid on side we are on a really strong trajectory for continued growth in the years ahead.”

According to Atom, Plaid will be working with it in the business lending process for both CBILS and non-CBILS application. The app-based bank will be using Plaid’s Payment initiation capabilities to streamline fee payments.

Keith Grose, Head of International at Plaid said, “When Open Banking first took shape, SMEs were largely ignored. Now three years in, we’re finally seeing innovative services emerge, like Atom, that solve their unique financial needs- and in an economic climate where they face bigger obstacles than ever before.”

Recently, Rabobank’s spin-off SurePay announced another successful implementation of its UK Confirmation of Payee solution for UK-based Atom bank. The FinTech is responsible for checking over 95% of all Dutch payments with the IBAN-Name Check and its Confirmation of Payee solution checks 25% of all online payments in the UK. SurePay’s Confirmation of Payee solution has been designed to comply with all relevant UK rules and regulations. The service enables payers to verify that the payee’s name and sort code match so they can prevent transferring money to the wrong person or business, whether by intent (payment fraud) or unintentionally (misdirected payments).