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In 2014, Nick Ogden and I drew up what we felt was true Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS). This was a bank that had full banking capabilities, was not dependent on any other financial service provider and would have the capabilities for other regulated businesses (fintech, banks, credit unions, building societites) to provide true banking services. As a BaaS provider, having the actual ability to hold the funds, to provide FSCS protected accounts and capabilties and be the ones with the liquidity to move around for payments was key. It meant customers would have all the capabilties of one of the big incumbent banks without 95% of the overhead in costs or operational complexity. It meant the market could become far more competitive and that innovation could flourish. We called the vision ClearBank and built Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS).

Since 2014 BaaS has morphed into something much wider, most implementations are missing the underlying deposit taking banking license. For me, this is not true BaaS, no, its all about simplifying access to banking services. But a puriest definition really doesnt matter.

The story here is that there is massive value in simplifying access to banking services. It's a problem that is global, it needs solving and is a highly valuable proposition. This all leads to richer platforms, better solutions, the term embedded finance is possible and ultimately better customer outcomes.

I think this is fab news and I welcome the continued growth of providers of BaaS in all the variations BaaS now means...Big congratulations...

It is always a positive move to look to address challenges and inefficiencies in the world of payments. This is a positive step forward in investigating possible solutions.

IMHO a blockchain adds potential hidden costs and adds friction at different stages of the true end to end / full proccess. Complications regarding liquidity management, data residency, privacy, global interopability, scale, performance, sanctions screening, AML are all challenges that become more complicated when you add in a blockchain. I am a great fan of DLT and blckchains, but for the right use case - for me, there is a simpler, more efficient, more flexible and more complete solution already being brought to the market.....

First off, push fraud is where i use my own bank credential and make a payment to someone presenting themsevels as something else (like a company etc etc) - it is not giving away my login credentials. Thats phishing and social engineering. 

This concept of calling 159 sounds ok, but most people are tricked - thats the point, they have been tricked. So why would they be hanging up and then calling 159. The people that will be calling the number will be those that aren't being tricked. So how will this move the needle signficiantly in the fight against con artists. 

I am constantly amazed that banks and the entire industry don't opt to address this issue properly. Year after year we see this fraud rise and the solutions to date are at best a token gesture. Confirmation of Payee!? Wow really. And now this?

It is time start tackling this issue properly. Fraud should be paid for by the receiving bank, simple as that. That is step 1, step 2 is to acknowledge that the entire problem is one of a verifiable identity. Well that is solved and will be available in weeks to banks and the industry if they wish to embrace it! 

I wrote on this only a few days ago because until we acknowledge the way criminals are working, acknowledge how smart they are all we will continue to do is provide token gestures which at best slow them down for a few weeks...

Let’s finally address push payment fraud – FinTechAndrew – The blog (wordpress.com)

Great to see digital ID moving forward, however I am not a fan of this approach at all. Acting as a broker between organisations that store identity data is nuts - it takes away a lot of the control and security associated with the person (or business) themselves holding their identity data and controlling how that uses. It is the opposite to having the customer at the centre of things - and therefore in my mind open to abuse and shuts down innnovative approaches to various other services - think open finance. 

So one step forward, maybe two steps backward...

This is great news for the both JP and Thought Machine. It's great to see new technologies, new approaches and that "cloud native" approach being recognised by the big banks.... Great job!

This will only happen if the FinTech firms themselves look at how they control and manage customer data. This is all very possible if the customer is truely at the centre of the ownership of data. 

If we really want open finance, then FinTech firms should be embracing SSI digital identity technology from providers like ID Crypt Global, Evernym etc. That way the customer is at the heart of data owenership and total control - then we can talk Open Finance and an effective Open Banking implementation.....Coadec then at least has a workable model that they can put forward and enforce (almost) banks to embrace that approach....

It's good to see more competition in the marketplace, however it is crowded. I don't see anything there on offer that isn't already available from other players, like Monzo, Starling etc etc

They had one option ;)

This shows that Open Banking access methods are broken - especially if you still enable screen scraping. I know this open banking type implementation globally is very different per jurisdiction, but the consistent thing is users give up / provide a third party with access to bank account data. This is tragically and fundamentally wrong. Users should be sharing data from their own controlled repository which could be a copy of that banking data. This way the user is totally and always in control and banks / platforms like this cannot abuse access. 

Its basics. Time to force banks and all ecommerce to leverage Self-Sovereign Identity principles!

So the pre-paid card element is a great place / way to start out, Monzo proved this many years ago. However, lets hope that Kroo learn from those that have gone before and don't try to "build too much" of their own platforms when becoming a bank. If they do, they will soon see just how much they have to build and why even massively successful challengers like Monzo are bogged down and have such high operational costs. The trick here is to deliver your product vision, not get tied up necessarily in the banking world (unless you really need that deposit taking license - which you don't)...