The Open Banking train is gaining momentum, with new participants jumping on board all the time. The driver of this success is bLink, the Swiss Open Banking platform of SIX Group. At the beginning of November, bLink again announced four new partners in its ecosystem: the accounting tool bexio, SwissSalary, Counteo and LIMMOBI.
But how can banks participate in this growth story? There’s a lot to be said for getting started with a next-gen multibanking offering. In this blog post, we explain what makes bLink-based multibanking the perfect gateway to Open Banking.
Ever since SIX launched the bLink platform for business banking in 2020, a modern, sophisticated API has been available for the Swiss financial center. Major banks such as UBS, CS, ZKB, SGKB and third-party providers such as Bexio and Klara are already on board. Thanks to bLink, the question is no longer whether Open Banking will become mainstream; it’s simply a matter of how long it will take. And, of course, how banks can stand out from their competitors by getting involved at an early stage and gaining an early mover advantage.
However, there is also a concise answer to this. A multibanking offering for business customers is the ideal strategic lever to enable you to position yourself successfully for Open Banking today. With Contovista’s bLink-based multibanking module, banks can provide a superior customer experience and meet the specific needs of the SME target group. The seamless overview of all accounts saves time and facilitates business processes. For banks, multibanking also opens up new potential for consulting and cross-selling.
The continuous growth of the bLink platform thanks to new participants demonstrates the significant digital pressure placed on established banks. An increasing number of business customers, especially from the underserved SME sector, are using offerings where third-party providers deliver value-added services based on account data. This threatens to drive these customers away from previous channels such as their main bank’s e-banking. Neo-banks or banking services from the big tech groups are also providing growing competition.
How does multibanking help here? At first glance, it may seem paradoxical to counter the threat posed by Open Finance by opening up your customer data. That’s not the case, however, as multibanking enables banks to position themselves as the central partner for their business customers’ journey into the new world of (Open) Banking.
«With Contovista Multibanking, banks do not only pass on their data to third parties, but use it to open up new sources of revenue.»
Lior Leibovich, Senior Product Manager at Contovista
Since customers can also manage their relationships with third-party banks in the bank’s financial cockpit, there is less and less need to log into them at all. By providing their own customer-centric Open Banking offerings, banks are now moving from being a mere “data provider” for FinTechs to becoming a player that also reaps the benefits of the new paradigm. The bLink platform enables institutions to take on the role of both service user and service provider.
It’s no coincidence that Contovista relies on the bLink platform for multibanking. After all, it ensures connectivity to the constantly growing ecosystem and thus the desired economies of scale offered by the platform economy. The basis for this is bLink’s platform for standardised interfaces, which enables the powerful functions of account information services and payment deposit services. As a result, unlimited new partnerships can be created, while new products and services are constantly being added.
In addition, bLink harbours the advantages of digitalisation. All participants – customers, financial institutions and third-party providers – can rely on fair, equal and secure conditions. In addition to bLink, Contovista also offers the option of using EBICS for multibanking. This long-established standard is particularly suitable for larger companies and facilitates international connectivity.
bLink enables high-performance Open Banking, while the participants form the necessary ecosystem. Yet for multibanking to be a future-oriented winning formula, a crucial ingredient is still missing: the integration of next-gen features that enable customers and banks alike to realise the additional benefits of Open Banking in the first place. Contovista’s multibanking module is based on the Business Finance Manager (BFM), which provides exactly such features.
The Smart Financial Cockpit for business customers provides customers with advanced liquidity planning, cash flow forecasting, and valuable real-time insights across all accounts. At the same time, third-party account insights create a more comprehensive data basis for banks, which they can use to make more tailored product offerings. These capabilities are enabled by powerful analytics and AI technologies in the background.
Further functions will be added continuously in the future in an automated manner. By adopting a technology-agnostic approach, customers and banks don’t have to deal with updates or standards: innovation is already on board with Contovista’s multibanking module.
The Expert: Lior Leibovich
Lior is Senior Product Manager and Multibanking expert at Contovista with more than 10 years of start-up experience in: product management, team leadership, agile development, business development, strategic consulting and technical marketing. His strengths lie in the interaction between tech, ux and business domains. His passion is to develop innovative products based on user needs. Lior holds an MBA in Hi-tech management & innovation, and a Bachelor in Physics, both from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology
