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START UP OF THE MONTH FinTech building blocks


IBS Journal chats to Francesco Simoneschi, Co-founder, TrueLayer, which recently launched the private beta for its API platform


Interview by Scott Thompson


yourself.


I


BS Journal: Tell us about


Francesco Simoneschi: I am a serial entrepreneur, and partner of San Fran- cisco-based VC firm, Mission Market. I previously co-founded Staq which was acquired by Upsight, and DomainsBot, which is now part of the German group Sedo Holding. Last year, I managed TrueLayer’s efforts to close a $1.3 mil- lion funding round, lead by Connect Ventures. Other venture capitalists and angel investors that have contributed to this round include Graph Ventures, Tony Jamous and Eric Nadalin (Co- founders of Nexmo, a leading cloud communication platform), and a number of others with banking and enterprise software background.


IBS Journal: What’s your business model?


FS: We are working on building a reliable banking API platform and see many opportunities to partner with FinTech businesses and enterprises of all sizes including banks, that want to create secure, customer-friendly apps and digital services. This is an emerg- ing sector and the FinTech market needs the tools and support to build a new generation of experience-driven financial apps. We charge for access


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to TrueLayer’s infrastructure; we want innovators to build quickly and at low cost. We want to enable users to create prototypes quickly and to be able to test the market before entering into a full commercial agreement with us to cover the use of our APIs at volume.


IBS Journal: What sets you apart?


FS: We are an independent banking and FinTech infrastructure layer. That means organisations can use our banking APIs to connect to multiple banks at one time, rather than having to connect in- dividually to each bank API (if they have even made them available). We have also done all the groundwork on ensur- ing compliance with emerging PSD2 regulations and in the UK with the CMA Open Banking standard API.


Our authentication and data security model is titanium-standard. This means that our FinTech and enterprise partners can focus on providing great customer experiences rather than on the infra- structure that’s needed behind the scenes to ensure robust security and real-time data access.


We believe that standard functions like managing payments and aggregating account information, ensuring customer identity, and confirming customer con-


sent, are all going to become technical building blocks that every bank and FinTech will need. That’s not where their competitive advantage lies. We want to provide that core infrastructure at the most robust and secure level possible so that FinTech businesses can get on with building engaging new experiences that help end customers better manage their wealth and finances.


IBS Journal: Who or what inspired you to set the company up?


FS: From day one, we have been working with a core group of the most forward-thinking, customer-focused FinTech providers in the world. Several are already building applications that consume our APIs and by working closely with them we have been able to ensure our infrastructure imple- ments bank-grade security standards for authentication and consent. We’ve been fortunate to be able to build our infrastructure in close connection with the FinTech organisations that need to create apps while also meeting with regulations and participating in indus- try regulation networks. This has meant that we’ve been able to respond to their needs for agile product development while also being able to fully conform with banking and data privacy regula- tions as they become more fine-tuned.


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