The great rebundling of financial services products has begun, as German smartphone-only bank Number26 partners with TransferWise to add direct in-app access to the London-based company's P2P currency exchange platform.
The new service is available to all Number26 customers from today, and transfers will initially be permitted from euros into eight currencies: U.K. pounds, U.S. dollars, Swedish krona, Indian rupees, Australian dollars, Hungarian forints, Swiss francs, and Polish zloty.
Number26's co-founder and CEO Valentin Stalf says its ambition is to create a single app that integrates the services of multiple fintech startups, providing an aggregated showcase for the best emerging alternatives to traditional banking services on a single screen.
"Our goal is to leverage the best banking products from around the world and make them accessible to customers with one tap, creating a fintech hub inside the Number26 app," he says. "And by adding one of the world's best fintechs in TransferWise as our flagship partner, we can drive banking innovation much faster than traditional banks."
Both companies share a common investor in former Paypal founder Petier Thield. Number26 last years scooped EUR10 million in funding from Thiel's Valar Ventures fund and has since expanded into eight European countries, winning 100,000 customer accounts along the way.
The Number26 tie-up is TransferWise's second partnership this year, following the installation of the company's API at Estonian bank LHV.