The U.K.’s Nationwide Building Society announced Thursday (Aug. 25) that it is deploying the open finance platform Moneyhub, giving customers the ability to open a savings account and fund it straight away.
Nationwide is currently a minority stakeholder in Moneyhub. Previously, Nationwide customers members would have to wait a few days until the account was fully opened before they could transfer the money needed to meet the account funding requirements.
The building society stated that this led to around 8% of accounts being closed “as members would simply forget to credit the account.”
Nationwide said that initially, the new process will be available for Fixed Rate Online Bonds before being rolled out to other savings products in the future. Moneyhub’s open banking payment initiation service (PIS) technology, also known as sweeping, will connect savers directly to accounts held elsewhere, facilitating a more immediate transfer of funds.
“We all lead increasingly busy lives, so it’s easy to see why so many people forget to go back and fund their new savings account after it’s been opened,” said Daniel King, chief digital product owner at Nationwide Building Society. “By partnering with Moneyhub and using Open Banking technology we are able to streamline the process and in doing so allow our members to start earning a higher rate of interest on their money right from day one.”
Dan Scholey, chief commercial officer at Moneyhub, added, “Open Banking enables frictionless payments, easy connections and endless possibilities for consumers and providers of financial services. By using Open Banking technology, we can give Nationwide members the ability to seamlessly sweep their money to where it can work the hardest to ultimately improve their long-term financial wellness.”
In April, the U.K.-based FinTech Wyzr announced that it was teaming up with Moneyhub to help power its financial planning solution.
See also: Moneyhub, Wyzr Partner on Automated Financial Planning
Thanks to data channeled through Moneyhub’s application programming interfaces (APIs), Moneyhub’s categorization engine is able to label transactions to give users a better picture of their finances.
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