Railsbank hopes to do for the financial services industry what Apple’s iTunes did for the music industry.
At the recent Singapore Fintech Festival the company, which has its Asian hub in Singapore, launched its no-code platform called Houston and its new API called OpenRailz. The aim is to make embedding finance into apps and customer journeys as simple as drag and drop.
Nigel Verdon, Railsbank’s co-founder and CEO, told Next Money that over the past four years, in preparation for Houston and OpenRailz, they had deconstructed financial products into core digital components to enable its customers, regardless of sector, to reconstruct and embed financial services into their businesses and customer journeys, similar to how iTunes brought music back to its basics to allow consumers to create their ideal music experience.
Houston is the User Interface layer which sits on top of the Railsbank open finance Operating System. The aim is to transform the building, launching and managing of financial applications in the same way that the Macintosh transformed how people interacted with the personal computer.
Verdon said the Houston platform takes inspiration from the no-code movement and will further the democratisation agenda, providing Railsbank’s customers with the tools to scale their financial product proposition quickly and efficiently.
The OpenRailz API will allow any financial services provider to plug their products securely and compliantly into the Railsbank platform, and enable them to rapidly build financial apps and embedded experiences.
Verdon explained: “The Houston and OpenRailz API continue the innovation journey which Clive and I set out on, by releasing APIs that we previously only used internally to enable third parties to hook on to the Railsbank platform.
“Much like Apple did with iTunes by creating the digital music track, we’re giving businesses easy access to financial building blocks so they can develop the next generation of financial services that are embedded into customer journeys and centered around the consumer rather than around a legacy financial institution.
“We’re working hard to lead innovation in the industry. We released the first BaaS API back in 2016, and since then, we’ve become the first global BaaS platform, the first NBFI BaaS business to be a GBP clearer, and the first to launch a true turnkey Credit Card-as-a-Service proposition. Now, as others are just releasing BaaS products, we’ve taken another huge innovation step forward with the Houston platform and OpenRailz API.”
