Crédit du Nord Introduces Multibank Credit Transfer Service
In line with PSD2-derived opportunities, Crédit du Nord –subsidiary of Société Générale– adds an interbank, external transfer service to their set of offers. They had already included an aggregation feature for monitoring accounts and invoices, and now bet on the Open-Banking trend for the sake of diversification.
Crédit du Nord introduces an online service for helping customers manage bank accounts held in several institutions. They may debit one of the accounts they have with another bank and transfer the amount to an already registered account. They can either use a mobile app or Crédit du Nord website.
This subsidiary of Société Générale is not relying on banks’ APIs for this feature; For now, only few are actually operational. It does, however, rely on Web scraping techniques using customers’ access codes to their bank accounts -as self-reliant aggregation service do (Linxo and Bankin’, for instance). Crédit du Nord acts as a trusted third party making it easier for customers to access different accounts. Fourteen banks are already eligible, including Crédit Mutuel, La Banque Postale and Banque Populaire.
Aside from enabling customers to check their balance and initiate credit transfer through a single interface, Crédit du Nord will be relying on Open-Banking to design other services. An API platform on financing goods for estate agencies is currently being developed. Also, they are planning to include Klick&Pay for their e-merchants.
Comments – Banks in the Open-Banking age
On a constantly evolving market, banks risk losing touch with their customers as new entrants are emerging. In the Open-Banking age, some prepare extra services so they can keep running the innovation race. Crédit du Nord tries to adjust their strategy to meet customers’ expectations and deal with this forced opening to competition. The group is hoping to become a one-stop customer interaction platform, helping them monitor their personal finances.
Other institutions should rely on this strategy in the months to come. BNP Paribas and Crédit Agricole, for instance, are working on a similar service. They could then bounce back and eventually fight competition from aggregation services such as Bankin’. Their goal is the same: better understand customers’ behaviour and provide them with a full-fledged set of products, while avoiding disintermediation from third parties.