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00:06 Hello everyone.
00:09 How are you today?
00:10 My name is Gosia, I'm a cofounder of Fena and
00:13 today I'm going to talk about account information services.
00:20 I know riveting, I promised in one of my
00:25 previous videos that I am going to explain what
00:29 I o often refer as Data APIs or Account
00:33 Information Services APIs, what it is and how small
00:38 and medium business owners can take advantage of it.
00:43 So, in a nutshell, account information services, basically it's
00:49 an ability for a third party like ourselves, so
00:54 a third party provider as ourselves, Fena, to
00:59 request information about your bank account with your consent
01:06 and what sorts of information we can request.
01:09 So we can request your confirmation of
01:11 your sort code and account number.
01:14 We can request information on the name,
01:18 on the actual name on the account.
01:21 So my actual name is not Gosia, it's
01:24 Malgorzata, but no one can pronounce it.
01:26 So if I ever get a request to grant someone access
01:30 to my name on the bank account, my name will appear
01:34 as Malgorzata Joanna Furmanik, because that's my name.
01:40 I can give you an access to my transaction
01:46 history for you to read through my transaction history
01:51 and you might ask why anyone would want this.
01:55 There are actually a few use
01:57 cases for those account information services.
02:02 So, for instance, if you're a lender and you want
02:07 to cheque affordability of the loan, you might want to
02:11 see, you might want to get an access to the
02:14 previous transaction or transaction history and the balance history of
02:18 that person asking for the loan, just to assess if
02:23 whatever they're getting onto it.
02:24 So incomings and outgoings on a bank account actually
02:28 will allow them to maintain and repay the loan.
02:32 So that's one use case.
02:34 Another use case is confirmation or identity.
02:38 So having, for instance, probably many of you
02:44 had to at some point confirm the identity.
02:47 So in the UK, there's no system of
02:50 national identities, so usually the identity can be
02:53 confirmed with the passport, but sometimes you might
02:56 not have a passport or a driving licence.
02:59 Or if you might not have a driving licence, so
03:01 often people are asked to bring things like bills with
03:04 your name and address or similar, or a bank statement.
03:10 So having an ability to just send you a link and
03:13 you give them access to what name is on the bank
03:16 account, it can help them to confirm your identity.
03:19 So if I'm telling someone that I'm Malgorzata Joanna Furmanik
03:23 and I give them grand them access to
03:25 read what name I have on my bank account,
03:28 they can confirm that I am who I am.
03:31 So, as I mentioned, so loans, identity, a lot
03:35 of credit scoring agency, they use it for assessing
03:38 the credit worthiness of the person as well.
03:44 It can be used for rent affordability to see
03:48 if you can actually afford a flat you want
03:50 to rent, a house, you want to rent so
03:56 that's kind of the most common use cases.
03:59 It also can be used for basically budgeting.
04:04 A lot of budgeting apps use open banking APIs
04:08 to get information about your various accounts and help
04:11 you budget and help you save money.
04:13 So savings account and saving apps as well can help.
04:16 You can use that data to give you
04:18 a recommendation for your savings or your budgeting.
04:23 So that's kind of the most common use cases.
04:25 You might ask why I'm talking about it.
04:28 So we are mostly payment provider using open
04:30 banking, but we also use account information services.
04:35 Why do we use it?
04:37 So we use it to smooth
04:40 the onboarding process for our clients.
04:45 So as a payment provider, we need to run KYC.
04:51 So know your customer processes or know your business.
04:54 So businesses, we're serving processes to see if
04:59 we know who we're serving, who we're giving
05:01 access to, our payment, open banking payments.
05:06 So in order to confirm if the business is registered
05:11 with us using the bank account that belongs to them,
05:15 we ask them to connect the bank account that they're
05:20 going to receive money to to our platform so we
05:23 can actually read the name on that specific bank account.
05:28 So if you ABCD Business and you have a
05:31 bank account that says that bank account belongs to
05:34 ABCD Business, we can then confirm that, yes, this
05:38 is your bank account, and you are okay to
05:40 receive money to that bank account that effectively prevents
05:44 fraud and fraudulent businesses or fraudulent actors trying to
05:50 take advantage of other businesses.
05:52 So that's one way of doing it.
05:54 Another way of how we're using Data API for
05:59 our clients or with our clients is we actually
06:02 double confirm if the money from the payment initiation.
06:06 So open banking payments arrive on the bank account
06:09 of the business that we provide a service to.
06:13 So, for instance, you have your store, your customer just made
06:19 a payment to you of, I don't know, 25 pounds.
06:22 We got a confirmation from the
06:24 bank that transaction has been executed.
06:28 Now we can run a cheque on the transaction history
06:33 that arrives onto the bank account of that business, and
06:36 we say, yes, that 25 pounds has arrived on this
06:39 bank account, and we mark this as paid.
06:42 So that's how we use the Data APIs.
06:47 If you guys interested in learning more about Data
06:50 APIs or account information services, please leave your questions
06:55 or comments in the comment box below.
06:59 If you have any specific questions that
07:01 are specific to your business, you feel
07:03 free to email support@fena.co.
07:06 We get to you as soon as we can.
07:09 In the meantime, have a lovely
07:11 day and I'll see you
Article by
Gosia Furmanik
CEO and Founder
Published on
