U.S. company makes open banking history

On June 1, Token.io Ltd. became the first licensed Payment Initiation Service Provider to conduct an end-to-end payment through a public bank application programming interfact (API). The San Francisco-based open-banking platform provider received confirmation by the UK Open Banking Implementation Entity that it was indeed first to execute this type of transaction.

The initial API payment was executed via Token's network using Santander's API payment initiative endpoints, the company noted. "Billions of payments will follow," said Marten Nelson, co-founder and chief marketing officer at Token. "Ours was the first."

Less than a month earlier, Token, which also operates offices in London and Berlin, was granted authority by the Financial Conduct Authority to deliver payment initiation and account information services under terms of the European Commission's Payment Services Directive 2 designed to increase pan-European competition and participation from non-banks and guarantee faster payments.

Infrastructure in place

According to Token, with the infrastructure operational, banks, merchants and other providers of payment and data services can now leverage open banking to reduce costs, generate new revenues, increase security and deliver a simpler, more convenient digital payment experience for the end user.

Through its universal open API banking platform, Token enables banks, merchants and other third-party providers to connect to any bank in the EU for payments and account information requests, thereby solving the integration pain being felt across the industry caused by multiple, proprietary bank APIs, the company stated.

In addition, unlike competing in-house developed solutions, Token's platform supports the same API across all banks. As a result, merchants and payment processors are able build bank direct payment methods and data aggregation solutions for their customers.

As a team, Token's technology, banking and security experts hail from Google, Apple, Microsoft, Barclays, ACI Worldwide, HSBC, Twitter and Square. In addition, its founder and CEO Steve Kirsch is credited with being the inventor of several groundbreaking Internet technologies.

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