Stories ENG

Deposit accounts also enter the era of open banking

Valentina Cuppone
Valentina Cuppone

Digital transformation has completely changed the financial sector. The wave generated by the advent of open banking results in the possibility of creating new services thanks to the collaboration with Fintech companies, breaking down barriers and limits to make room for new solutions. 

Banca Sella immediately grasped the potential and the value that this extraordinary innovation can generate for customers, by becoming the first Italian open banking active bank since 2017 and still, it is one of the leading Italian companies in this area. 190 Application Programming Interfaces, APIs, are available, thanks to which it is possible to respond to the specific Customer needs. The challenge is the transition to cooperation and the creation of products and services through "an alliance" with Fintech companies, with the ultimate goal of offering ever better customer service.  

It is with this in mind that the new partnership with the Fintech company Raisin, a pan-European marketplace for savings products, should be considered, thanks to which Banca Sella is the first bank in Italy to give its customers the possibility of accessing directly, from their internet banking application, also deposit accounts of other Italian and European banks.

But this is not the first case of a new native open banking service. Banca Sella has launched the first "voice banking" service, in co-operation with a startup, giving the possibility to check and operate on current accounts through intelligent smart speakers. It also provided its customers with the "virtual IBAN" allowing to radically transform the payment reconciliation process of companies through the association of a virtual IBAN to each payer and the possibility of checking, through an API, their relevant transactions. Again, it was among the first to launch the current account aggregator in Italy, providing customers view of all their current accounts, also from other banks. 
 

Share and participate to the discussion

Going back to the agreement with Raisin, the partnership allows Banca Sella customers to choose savings solutions among the most convenient and best suited to their needs, with no need to "leave" the navigation of their internet banking application. Through a simple wizard, customers will be able to independently subscribe one or more deposit accounts of other Italian and European banks, transferring the money from their current account to the chosen deposit account and keeping it monitored until the expiry of the obligation.

A pilot project will give a selected number of Bank customers the initial ablility to choose among five different deposit solutions to which, in the coming months, others will be added. The offer will then be extended to all retail customers. 

Raisin, a Berlin-based Fintech company, is a pan-European marketplace for savings products that since its launch in 2013 has placed ¿ 28 billion for over 300,000 customers in over 27 European countries and more than 100 partner banks. 

This agreement demonstrates how open banking leads to a new way of approaching financial services, made up of interaction among the different players operating in the field, thus developing a competitive collaboration that can lead to the creation of new models and services to better serve customer needs.