M1 selects Thought Machine to power The Finance Super App

By Edlyn Cardoza

M1, The Finance Super App™ helping people manage and grow their money, recently announced it has selected Thought Machine, the cloud-native banking technology company, to power and develop its platform. Thought Machine’s cloud-native core banking engine, Vault Core, will be deployed by M1 to build and launch new products – all from a single platform.

M1 empowers financial well-being by helping individuals intelligently invest, borrow, and spend within one holistic super app – rich with automation and personalised features. Last year, M1 completed a Series E funding round that valued the business at $1.45 billion. M1 will use this investment to develop its offering and, with Thought Machine technology, innovate faster and more efficiently than its incumbent counterparts. 

M1 will migrate existing banking products and accounts onto Vault Core and have the capability to build even more innovative personalised products. M1 selected Vault Core for its modern architecture, built from the ground up to take full advantage of cloud-native computing. Vault Core’s Universal Product Engine will enable M1 to design and build lending and banking products, and its real-time Ledger will give M1 complete control over the management of its data.

M1 has a clear vision for the future of finance. Clients have access to a full spectrum of highly integrated products specifically designed to improve financial well-being through one single portal. Thought Machine is uniquely positioned to support M1’s vision as every product can be built and launched from Vault Core – and managed from a single source of truth. 

Brian Barnes, CEO of M1, said: “We want to help individuals have far greater control over their financial future. To achieve this, we’ve created a financial super app which enables customers to manage their money from a single, coherent platform. As we develop our suite of investing, borrowing and banking products, we need a truly modern core to power us into the future. Vault Core is unlike any other banking platform: its microservices-based architecture and smart contracts capabilities each enable the configuration and launch of highly complex products all from a single, real-time platform.” 

Paul Taylor, CEO and founder of Thought Machine, said: “At Thought Machine, we believe customers deserve exceptional financial services which are designed to help them better understand and manage their money. Banks and fintechs investing in cloud-native technology will be set up to succeed – and M1 is clearly one of these firms. We are delighted to be working with M1 as they use modern tools to build a world-class service.”

Thought Machine’s core banking platform, Vault Core, is uniquely positioned to support large-scale banks undertaking core transformation and challenger banks and FinTechs launching new propositions to the market. Thought Machine’s client roster includes Standard Chartered, Intesa Sanpaolo, Arvest Bank, Mascoma Bank, Lunar and Atom bank, among others around the world.