Lloyds’ API Brings Instant Payment to Car Dealerships
FACTS
- Lloyds Bank makes their banking API available to the FinTech Blue Motor Finance: this partnership ensures that car dealerships are sent loan payments instantly.
- Targets: Blue Motor Finance traders and dealerships.
- These car dealers will be able to receive funds from their customers within a matter of minutes once the car sale is signed (when the loan is granted by Lloyds).
- This Instant Payment API had been crafted by Lloyds Bank Commercial Banking API Lab.
BLUE MOTOR FINANCE
- FinTech created in 2005
- Fastest growing company in Europe according to the Financial Times (March 2019)
- £1B in loans
- 100,000 customers
CHALLENGES
- Betting on a successful offer. This new offer relies on an instant direct debit API, co-created based on Faster Payments, which remains successful in the UK (1 every 5 credit transfers in the UK).
- Strengthening a partnership. Lloyds and Blue Motor Finance say that opening the banking API to also include car sales further highlights a long-existing partnership, which could also lead to other joint offers.
- Pushing the Open Banking boundaries. Lloyds takes one step further, more than just adding aggregation services, their know-how in building APIs is applied to the Instant Payments industry.
MARKET PERSPECTIVE
- The Second Payment Service Directive came into effect over a year ago and contributes to opening banking institutions’ Information Systems to third parties. The UK stands out as a pioneering market when it comes to tackling this topic, and sees several long-standing banking players support Open Banking-related projects.
- Lloyds Bank is among involved players: they recently relied on Open Banking technologies to make it easier to track their customers’ expenses and finances. Through this partnership their skills are being applied to car industry, as well, in addition to a more conventional focus on account aggregation.