Italy’s newest challenger bank Flowe goes live with Temenos

By Pavithra R

Banca Mediolanum Group’s digital bank, Flowe has announced that the challenger bank has gone live with Temenos Transact, core banking and AI-powered Financial Crime Mitigation (FCM), delivered as SaaS.

Flowe leveraged Temenos Transact core banking technology to launch, aiming to disrupt the market with sustainable and ethical financial services. The digital bank provides user friendly mobile banking experiences and aims to be more eco-friendly than traditional banks. Temenos SaaS technology helped the company in gaining the agility required to bring new products to market and offer the personalized experiences that customers need.

Flowe expects to utilize Temenos SaaS combined with the unique ability of the underlying technologies of Temenos Transact to launch new products with reduced time to market and differentiate the customer experience.

Flowe provides account with an Italian IBAN without monthly fees and with the Fun account. ATM withdrawals in the Eurozone are free, and the maximum account balance is €10,000. Flowe cards are made from wood that comes from certified forests, and it supports reforestation in Guatemala, reduces and offsets CO2 emissions and supports local families. The bank encourages social wellbeing and builds community by enabling users to share expenses.

The challenger bank is naturally paperless in its operations and offers facial recognition onboarding. Temenos’ API-first technology allows Flowe to reduce deployment time and costs as well as connect to third parties easily. Flowe has created a hyper efficient business model based on Temenos SaaS technology, which enables Flowe to pass on the benefits to its customers.

“We are excited to announce this strategic partnership with Temenos. Its cutting-edge technology powered our launch and now fuels our purpose to bring a new standard of sustainable banking to the European market. Temenos’ focus and unparalleled investment in innovation mean Flowe will continue to benefit from the most advanced banking technology. Temenos’ SaaS technology helped us to rapidly onboard a significant number of users in a matter of days. It will continue to support our growth as we expand our customer base and reach new markets but mainly, it will help us in our scope that is empowering people to live a meaningful, sustainable and happy life. Temenos’ open and API-first architecture will help us to continuously innovate and bring to market greener banking products and services as we build our reputation as Italy’s most sustainable digital bank,” said Ivan Mazzoleni, Chief Executive Officer, Flowe.

Temenos’ AI-driven FCM offers complete protection against financial crime to improve resiliency and customer experience despite rising cybercrime rates due to coronavirus. Temenos’ SaaS technology on Microsoft Azure accelerated the project timelines enabling Flowe to launch in 5 months and address the surge digital banking demands. 

Flowe also have plans to implement Temenos Payments to provide instant payments in response to heightened demand later this year. Temenos Payments will be integrated with Temenos Transact to provide seamless user experiences and market leading cost-income ratios.