Soon-to-be launched W1TTY leverages Oracle Cloud for better digital banking experience

By Gaia Lamperti

W1TTY, a smart finance innovator set to launch this autumn, will use Oracle Banking suite to deliver an easier and more rewarding financial experience for customers in Europe. Running on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), W1TTY will specifically target Gen Zs, students, and other young people starting their first job and building their careers. The service aims to put customers in control of their accounts, instead of a “take it or leave it” approach to products and pricing.

The London-based business will start offering services in Lithuania and Poland later this year after securing Electronic Money Institution (EMI) license in Lithuania and full passporting rights across the European Economic Area (EEA). W1TTY has also applied for the EU consumer credit licence and an EMI licence in the UK, so other international markets will follow soon.

“Speed of service is critical to us,” Ammar Kutait, W1TTY’s founder and CEO, said, “and the Oracle Banking suite with its microservices, API-ready platform, and short implementation time, fit perfectly into our technology roadmap.”

Oracle Banking is a suite of financial services applications that enable banks to offer a complete set of digital banking services, focusing on a customer-centric transformation. The suite includes digital core and applications for retail and corporate banking, real-time payments and secure, autonomous infrastructure in the Oracle Cloud. W1TTY will be implementing Oracle Banking Payments, Oracle FLEXCUBE, and Oracle Banking APIs from the Oracle Banking suite.

“In just 13 months, we launched a modern digital service with native apps and a cloud-based architecture,” Kutait explained. “This new platform integrated with multiple systems to offer a full stack of finance applications that will help W1TTY enhance the mobile financial experience for our customers.”

Built on a microservices architecture with 3000-plus open banking REST APIs, Oracle Cloud makes it easy for innovators like W1TTY to “plug in” additional third-party services when they need them while also providing a scalable, cloud-native environment for growth. For example, W1TTY will now  be able to use the suite for offering new payment business models, such as lending, as it evolves with customer needs. The suite’s data and analytical platforms will also help drive customer insights, integrate risk and finance, fight financial crime and comply with regulations.

W1TTY’s offering fits in a landscape where traditional banks face challenges unfathomable just a decade ago, while fintechs and big tech companies are exponentially acquiring customers with better lending and payments products. According to Oracle’s latest Global Retail Banking Consumer Report, which focused almost exclusively on Gen Zs and Millennials, 47% of consumers are ready to shift to another financial services provider for better rates, recommendations and plans.

Globally, this demographic is nearly a third of the world population and will represent a quarter of all spending power by 2030. For this reason, W1TTY mostly aims to appeal to the youngest customers, while also offering solutions to everyone who is dissatisfied with what is currently on offer and willing to try something genuinely different.

Sonny Singh, Executive Vice President and General Manager at Oracle Financial Services, commented: “W1TTY has a huge opportunity to capitalise on this unmet customer need and Oracle Banking suite will provide the right cloud-native architecture to enable it. With Oracle, W1TTY will be able to scale quickly to offer meaningful, personalised services, and process transactions intelligently and in real-time.’’