Finastra launches an embedded consumer lending solution

By Joy Dumasia

Finastra unveiled its embedded consumer lending solution, enabling access to traditional regulated lending options for consumers at point-of-sale (POS). Financial institutions, distributors and merchants will benefit from a platform that allows their customers to access lending options. 

Finastra Embedded Consumer Lending aims to make the buying process as frictionless as possible, providing more options to consumers and an alternative to the Buy Now Pay Later approach, which is often not applicable to high-value purchases. The BaaS platform provides merchants access to numerous lenders and their specific products. And for financial institutions, Finastra Embedded Consumer Lending provides access to a marketplace of distributors and merchants to distribute their banking products. 

Jeannette Kescenovitz, Senior Director, Solution Management, Banking as a Service and Orchestration at Finastra, said: “Finastra’s Embedded Consumer Lending solution offers financial institutions a direct route to growth by offering loans via a merchant’s digital point-of-sale. The solution builds connectivity and relationships between financial institutions and the distributor organizations that embed lending solutions at merchants’ point-of-sale.” 

Josh Williams, EVP, Chief Banking Officer at Seattle Bank, said: “Banking as a Service (BaaS) is a vital component of our growth strategy and embedding loans at the consumer point-of-sale opens a new channel to provide financing to customers we couldn’t have reached before. This cost-effective solution delivers consumers a safer, regulated alternative when it comes to POS financing. As our trusted partner of many years, Finastra is the ideal orchestrator as we connect and scale on our embedded finance offering.” 

Finastra’s Embedded Consumer Lending exposes APIs on Finastra’s FusionFabric.cloud open platform with which third-party distributors, like Loanstar Technologies, may integrate. Loanstar Technologies offers state-of-the-art technology to connect lenders to borrowers, creating POS consumer loans through their merchant network in numerous verticals. 

Andrew Turner, CEO at Loanstar Technologies, said: “Working with Finastra will enable us to scale up significantly, providing access to hundreds of financial institutions, like Seattle Bank, across the US. As a trusted provider of mission-critical financial services software, Finastra will help us connect with the right bank providers to bring billions of dollars of new liquidity to fund POS loans with our merchant customers.” 

Integrated with Finastra’s lending and origination core systems and hosted on Microsoft Azure, the solution enables financial institutions to process POS loan applications, including performing identity verification, decisioning, facilitating e-sign, and account creation funding. Using APIs and event notification systems, third-party distributors can provide real-time feedback to merchants and consumers on loan status. 

Recently, IBS Intelligence reported that Finastra announced that Rabobank, an international financial services group headquartered in the Netherlands, has selected the latest version of Fusion Global PAYPlus for increased efficiency and payment innovation.