A collaborative approach
Until now, banks and fintechs have usually worked in silo, developing their product offerings and acquiring customers to gain market share. But what if that changed? A chance meet up at Money20/20 in 2021 did just that and formed the basis of a relationship between a bank and a fintech to raise the bar in service deliverables for SMEs. But how can banks and fintechs embrace a healthy collective attitude to cooperation? And what is the role of Open Banking in enabling the connective tissue between the organisations?

SMEs are traditionally underserved
We often tend to put SMEs in a bucket - the fact we even refer to them as ‘SMEs’ puts over 99% of the UK’s businesses in one category. Over 99%. That’s an astonishing 5.6m businesses labelled as an SME.

When you actually look at these companies individually you realise that each of them is entirely different. The sector they are in, the structure of their business, their balance sheets and how they fundamentally operate varies immensely from business to business. They do however have one thing in common. They all make payments to their staff and suppliers to keep their business functioning.

The gold standard
The collaboration between Comma and Silicon Valley Bank stemmed from a connection at Money20/20. A connection on the event matchmaking app for fintechs and banks led to discussions around ways in which both parties could work together to benefit SMEs.

For the last two years, Comma has been working with SMEs to document what the ‘gold standard’ of banking API looks like and how banks can facilitate this for their users. The API doc in question has been carefully curated around SME needs to create the best possible user journey. The ultimate goal is to enable millions of businesses to be more efficient by granting the ability to automate payments, and removing manual entry from the process.

Improved Open Banking APIs allow for third party fintechs, like Comma, to focus on the unique aspects of SMEs and produce powerful payment tools that are designed at a much more granular level.

Tom Beckenham, founder of Comma said “Our vision is a world of frictionless payments - a place where payments and financial tasks are so automated that business owners forget they exist and working with banks like Silicon Valley Bank makes this possible”.

Comma has gained a unique perspective on how SMEs are adopting Open Banking across the UK. Listening to SME clients, bookkeepers, accountants, payroll professionals, as well as banks, has naturally led to an overarching view of the landscape and wants and needs of SMEs. That knowledge is being utilised as Comma and Silicon Valley Bank have explored ways to go above and beyond to foster innovation and break new ground beyond the bare minimum regulatory needs, with the common goal of benefiting startups.

Ger Kelly, Head of Banking at Comma said “Other banks should be inspired by the groundwork SVB have put in. By understanding the landscape and creating an ecosystem of partners like Comma, SVB are able to be agile and provide value to their users with a fraction of the development resource. We are collaborators, not competition”.

David McHenry, Head of Global Treasury and Payments at Silicon Valley Bank added, “Our clients are demanding more automation and integration between their financial management platforms and Silicon Valley Bank. We’re excited to use our Open Banking API platform to allow our clients to integrate with platforms like Comma that enable enhanced integrations and workflow processes.”

Tristan Blampied, Director, UK Payments Product Management at Silicon Valley Bank added, “Once the preserve of large multinational corporates using expensive SWIFT or proprietary transmission solutions, Silicon Valley Bank is proud to be making automated bulk file payments available to all customers no matter their size, and is delighted to be working with key Open Banking ecosystem players like Comma in order to make this possible.”

Both Silicon Valley Bank and Comma will be taking to the M Pulse Stage on Thursday 9th June to talk about their work together since.