Ecospend partners with Contis to offer Banking-as-a-Service products

By Joy Dumasia

Ecospend, the UK provider of Open Banking technology, has announced partnering with Contis, the pan European Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) provider. By integrating Ecospend’s ‘pay-by-bank’ technology, Contis’ customers will have the option to make account-to-account payments and utilise account information services (AIS) for financial insights. 

Contis customers will make instant payments between accounts, including holding accounts, allowing them to perform immediate withdrawals, refunds and ensure guaranteed deposits. Additionally, through Ecospend’s technology, and to help clients manage their finances, an authorisation code will be shared to confirm when funds have settled. This guarantees no refund or withdrawal is paid out before the initial payment is processed. 

Ecospend’s clients will access Contis’ holding accounts, allowing for instant and guaranteed deposits, withdrawals, and refunds through Open Banking technology. Ecospend’s customers will also be offered access to Contis’ accounts and can pay out of their accounts via Faster Payment, Sepa Credit Transfer, Sepa Instant and International Payment rails. 

James Hickman, COO at Ecospend, comments: “We are pleased to be partnering with Contis to help enhance their BaaS products with our Open Banking technology. By using our pay-by-bank tech, Contis will be able to offer its customers the ability to make instant payments across its suite of services whilst helping them gain better financial insight through our AIS enabled solutions. By working together with Contis, we can ensure that we both benefit from each other’s experience and expertise and continue to offer our customers the best experience possible.” 

Andy Lyons, MD Head of banking solutions, comments: “Working with Ecospend will allow us to fast-track payments across a range of our account services and ensure that customers no longer have to wait for payments to process. Additionally, by adding the authorisation code functionality to our holding accounts, customers can be more confident in the payment process and manage their finances more accurately. We hope that this will be the beginning of a long and prosperous partnership with Ecospend.”

Recently, IBS Intelligence reported that Following an announcement from HMRC in December, Ecospend could confirm it has initiated £2.4 billion worth of open banking transactions through its’ pay by bank’ services across its client portfolio.