Crédit Agricole adds another dimension to its BaaS subsidiary

La Fabrique By CA, the Crédit Agricole Group's start-up studio, acquired SFPMEI, an electronic money institution and a benchmark in the French FinTech market, earlier this year. Today, it is taking another step towards consolidating the bank's payment strategy by renaming the company Okali and opening up new prospects.

FACTS

• The Crédit Agricole Group has just renamed SFPMEI to Okali with the declared ambition of developing its offer.

• First of all internationally, by allowing Okali, via its French licence, to extend its activities within the European Union.

• But also in terms of pure offers. Okali will have to be able to adapt to the specific needs of the bank's customers thanks to its modularity and its capacity to support the group's innovative projects.

• Finally, Okali will have to open its services to the corporate sector rather than just to FinTechs in order to integrate the financial bricks that are currently missing from their services.

CHALLENGES

• Combining strengths: Behind the new name chosen for Okali, Crédit Agricole is defending its ambition to retain the agility of the former SFPMEI while putting the solidity of its historical banking group at its service.

• Short-circuiting the competition: By integrating Okali, Crédit Agricole is gaining time to position itself on the BaaS market without having to develop an in-house offer from scratch. Here again, this proven strategy represents a way for the bank to capitalise on the existing strengths of its new subsidiary.

• Completing a system dedicated to innovation: The collaboration between Okali and Crédit Agricole should also serve the Fabrique de la Banque, which supports the innovation of new players but has not, until now, had this regulated component to support disruptive products and FinTechs.

MARKET PERSPECTIVE

• As a pioneer of Banking-as-a-Service, SFPMEI has until now allowed unregulated players to offer payment services (accounts, card programmes) to their customers. It served big names in FinTech such as the unicorns Lydia and Spendesk for example, but also Blank, the digital account dedicated to professionals.

• Thanks to Okali, Crédit Agricole will now be able to fulfil its objective of strengthening its payments business with small and medium-sized businesses, merchants and e-retailers, a target that has historically been less well served by traditional financial players.