TrueLayer, a London-based fintech startup which provides financial APIs, has just closed a $7.5 million funding round led by venture capital fund Northzone and joined by previous investors Connect and Anthemis. TrueLayer will use the investment to expand across Europe, starting with Germany and France. Additionally, TrueLayer will substantially grow its team and develop new products to help companies and consumers make the most of Open Banking and PSD2.
Founded in 2016, TrueLayer secured $3 million in June 2017, prior to its official launch. Since Open Banking was launched in January, TrueLayer has secured a series of major partnerships and integrations with companies including Monzo, Starling Bank, Zopa, ClearScore, Canopy, Plum, BitBond, Emma, Anorak and CreditLadder. It also has a number of undisclosed partnerships in the pipeline with major companies in the consumer and financial space that will go live in the next 12 months.
With hundreds of developers signed up on the API platform and hundreds of thousands of consumers securely sharing financial data every day, TrueLayer set out to become the leading infrastructure layer between banks and third-party companies.
Its service provides an interface between financial institutions and third-party applications over an API. This allows companies to capitalise on new Open Banking and PSD2 rules by providing secure, clear and simple access to banking infrastructure.
Francesco Simoneschi, co-Founder and CEO of TrueLayer, stated: “Over the past few months our entire team has worked exceptionally hard to develop our product and secure new clients and partnerships. This has enabled us to play a major role in the development of Open Banking in the UK, and now, with this investment, we’ll be able to expand our service across Europe. In the coming months, we will be busy expanding to more and more countries as well as releasing a wealth of new functionalities and products to our Bank API platform.”
He continued: “We are extremely excited to see so many companies becoming seriously interested in Open Banking and PSD2 and we continue to believe this is an unparalleled opportunity for the financial and tech industries. It is already driving innovation and competition which is great news for consumers, yet we are only 1% done. We want TrueLayer to be the key player in the creation of a secure infrastructure that underpins Open Banking and this investment is a big step forward on this journey.”
TrueLayer became one of the first UK companies to be authorised and registered as a payment institution by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to provide account information and payment initiation services under Open Banking and PSD2. The confirmation means that it has passed rigorous security, management and operations assessments.
By using TrueLayer, businesses save a significant amount of time and resources, enabling a much broader range of companies to develop products that take advantage of PSD2 and Open Banking. Businesses can easily verify identity and account ownership using existing customer data; view accounts, check balances, and access transaction history; query bank accounts and cards to build powerful applications; and mitigate fraud and enhance credit scoring modelling using detailed income and expenses data from users’ bank account. For example, Zopa uses TrueLayer for faster income verification, Canopy to automatically update its customers’ rental information, Plum to connect its chatbot with Monzo and Starling Bank accounts, and Anorak to provide more accurate and timely insurance quotes.