Yapily, which builds APIs connecting banks with other providers, has secured $5.4m in its Seed funding round.
European early stage investor HV Holtzbrinck Ventures and UK-focused venture firm LocalGlobe provided the capital for the round.
This equity is being used to support the expansion of its technology team and create its own sales team.
London-based Yapily helps all-sized companies connect with retail banks, leveraging its single secure API to retrieve financial data and initiate payments. Its customers include accountancy firms, payment companies, crypto providers, digital wealth applications and e-commerce companies.
As part of open banking, banks are required to share their transaction data with third-parties, if a customer has requested. This is completed through APIs which enable real-time sharing of information and processing. Yapily lets a company access all banks offering open banking services through a single API rather than multiple separate ones.
The Yapily API is currently connected to 35 European banks for both data retrieval and payments initiation. This represents 250 million bank accounts. By the end of the year, it hopes to increase this to have 536 banks connected.
By leveraging the API, companies can access account aggregation, payment initiation, identity verification and transaction data aggregation.
Yapily founder and CEO Stefano Vaccino said, “I believe that we can democratise finance by making it possible for consumers to share their information in seconds through APIs. This can speed up loan approvals for small businesses, or even reduce the cost of all e-commerce transactions by 1 – 2%, a saving which can be passed on to the consumer.
“There is also a great opportunity here to help people overcome financial exclusion by giving consumers full visibility of their incomings and outgoings, and even warning them if they are embarking on financially risk behaviour.”
Last year, HV Holtzbrinck led the $11m seed funding round of transcription solution Verbit. The startup uses AI technology to accurately capture audio and video content helping companies with their communication monitoring requirements.
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