Outside the Marketplace, budgeting app Emma uses Open Banking and APIs to help customers collect data from multiple bank accounts to build an accurate budget. “But for others that’s having one holistic point like Starling Bank where they can log in and they can see everything in one place.” As a Marketplace partner, Wealthify is part of the Starling Promise: it costs the same to sign up to Wealthify through the Marketplace as it would going direct. For some people that’s separate apps,” says Michelle. “It’s about being more customer-centric and letting the customer access their data in their application how they like. Partner apps exchange data with Starling through APIs, the name for the technology that enables different software packages to exchange information.įor example, if you sign up to invest with Wealthify through the Starling Marketplace, you’ll be able to see your Wealthify investment balance within the Starling app. Customers can choose to share their Starling banking data with the third-party to save duplicate form filling and then pool data back into their Starling app. Wealthify is one of 21 integrations available in Starling’s Marketplace. “From a customer point of view, I think there’s a healthy amount of scepticism: would you give other applications access to your bank account or other financial apps? There’s been so much in the press over the last 18 months about data and being protective so I think people are a little bit wary.” How can Open Banking benefit customers? “It’s a job for all of us to work together to educate people,” says Michelle Pearce-Burke, co-founder and Chief Information Officer of Wealthify, an online investment platform. Its Marketplace, the space in the app where customers can browse and link third-party products and services to their bank account, is an example of going above and beyond regulatory requirements and really opening up banking for the better. Starling Bank was designed with Open Banking in mind right from the outset. Open Banking aims to improve access to third party products and services by giving customers the option to share elements of their banking data.

“Not many people know what Open Banking is,” says Loral Quinn, co-founder of social impact fintech Sustainably, one of hundreds of regulated organisations in the Open Banking ecosystem. Here, Charlotte Lorimer speaks to three co-founders of fintechs that use Open Banking, to explain what it is and how it can help you manage your money.

But just six months ago, almost three quarters of UK adults had still not heard of it, according to a YouGov poll. It’s the second anniversary of the Open Banking legislation coming into effect.

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