The Weekly Wrap: all you need to know by Friday COB | April 1st

By Gaia Lamperti

The Weekly Wrap is published every Friday and recaps the week’s main stories and deals, as well as upcoming events and announcements. For Prime subscribers only.

The Big Story

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has published its recommendations for the future oversight and governance of Open Banking, which include the establishment of a new Joint Regulatory Oversight Committee led by the FCA and the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) to provide effective regulatory oversight.

In a joint statement published alongside the CMA’s recommendations, the FCA, HM Treasury (HMT), the PSR, and the CMA have outlined their plans to establish the Joint Regulatory Oversight Committee to oversee the development of Open Banking beyond the CMA’s Open Banking remedies. The new Joint Regulatory Oversight Committee will draw up proposals for the design of the future entity by the end of 2022.

“We applaud the CMA for heeding our recommendation to create an interim ‘bedding in’ period between winding down the OBIE and a ‘future state’,” commented Nanna Saito Nielsen, VP of Banking Operations at online payments processor GoCardless. “This will provide sufficient time to deliver the remaining Open Banking roadmap and provide the robustness needed to drive mass uptake. It will also allow industry players to design that future state when open banking becomes part of ‘business as usual’, and to create a stable foundation upon which other initiatives such as Open Finance can be built.”

Harry Weber-Brown, CEO of The Investing and Saving Alliance (TISA), commenting on the CMA’s recommendations on the future arrangements for Open Banking, said: “We also believe the time is right to be forward-looking and move beyond open banking towards open finance, incorporating open savings, investments and pensions (OSIP) in our ambition to provide broad digital access to the full scope of financial services. OSIP would enable FinTechs and other financial institutions to access savings, investment and pensions data via APIs, bringing this kind of data sharing in line with open banking security, data minimisation standards and user experience. As a result, individuals can compare accounts more easily, automatically switch to a better rate, automate their savings or make more informed trade-offs about whether to save, invest, spend, borrow or consolidate.”

Deals of the week

• ArK Kapital has announced it raises €165 million in seed funding
• Yonder announced a £20 million seed round ahead of its launch in the UK
• Effectiv raises $4 million from Accel for fraud and risk management platform
• Dapio raises $3.4 million to bring ‘Tap to Pay’ to Android users in the UK and Europe
• FUEL raises €1.5 million for its no-code NFT platform for creators
• Phoebus Software reaches £80 billion assets under management
• Zimpler raises funding to accelerate its growth within A2A payments

Be on the lookout for

‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ FinTech platform Klarna has launched a new Open Banking business service to help companies connect globally called Klarna Kosma. Via the use of a single API, the platform allows financial apps to seamlessly connect with bank operators aiming to provide a simple and secure venture for FinTechs and merchants.

“Over the past year, the demand for open banking services from financial institutions and fintech start-ups has reached a tipping point,” said Wilko Klaassen, VP of Klarna Kosma. “Which is why we have built a dedicated business unit which brings together engineering, product management, sales and marketing all together in the same team to focus on this $15bn, fast-growing market.”