As part of the partnership, Plaid will enable customers to securely share their banking data with Atom, facilitating rapid response to lending applications
Atom bank, Plaid partner to help small businesses. (Credit: Gerd Altmann from Pixabay.)
UK-based retail bank Atom has teamed up with financial services company Plaid to provide open banking and payment initiation services to its customers.
The partnership is anticipated to start with offering a streamlined loan application journey and rapid decisions to small business owners.
Under the partnership, Plaid will enable customers to securely share their banking data with Atom, facilitating rapid response to lending applications.
Plaid International head Keith Grose said: “When Open Banking first took shape, SMEs were largely ignored.
“Now three years in, we’re finally seeing innovative services emerge, like Atom, that solve their unique financial needs- and in an economic climate where they face bigger obstacles than ever before.”
Plaid and Atom would initially work as part of a radical acceleration in the bank’s safe business lending process for both CBILS and non-CBILS applications.
Atom would leverage Plaid’s Payment Initiation capabilities to streamline fee payments, in addition to its consumer-permissioned open banking data for decisioning and underwriting.
Integration of Plaid into Atom’s technology platform would reinforce new direct to market smart savings and lending propositions, said the retail bank.
In addition to its smart contract technology and machine learning capabilities, Atom is anticipated to provide products that address customer requirements in real-time.
Atom bank chief customer officer Edward Twiddy said: “We always want to make things simple and easy for our customers and take away the hassle and frustration.
“This is why we’re so excited to work with Plaid as part of an exciting programme of new business banking product launches and service improvements in 2021.
“We’ve tripled the business lending on our balance sheet in the last 12 months whilst making big improvements to our propositions and services, and with partners such as Plaid on side we are on a really strong trajectory for continued growth in the years ahead.”