Tink makes transactions easier to read

American payment giant Visa acquired Tink in 2021. Since then, it has relied on the European FinTech to bring a range of services to market. Today, this strategy is taking shape with the launch of a new feature called Merchant Information. As its name suggests, this will provide consumers with additional information on the merchants they buy from, directly on their account statements.

FACTS

• Tink has therefore just announced the launch of a new functionality capable of offering consumers complete visibility of their transactions, right within their banking applications.

• The Merchant Information service will display clearer information on past transactions, such as :

  • the merchant's name,

  • logo

  • location,

  • contact details.

• Merchant Information is designed to give consumers a better understanding of their payments.

• The solution will be available in seven European markets by the end of 2024. Full roll-out in Europe is scheduled for spring 2025.

CHALLENGES

• Inform: Improving the readability of account statements is a major challenge in terms of making it easier to track spending. The quality of the information provided to consumers and customers is a key factor in customer satisfaction, and Tink includes Merchant Information in its Consumer Engagement offering.

• Meeting expectations: Tink relies in particular on a study it carried out in June 2024, which revealed that 58% of French consumers under the age of 35 (and 45% of adults in the UK) would like their bank to help them manage their money more effectively.

• Avoiding saturation and saving money: Some past transactions remain too often obscure for customers. Lack of understanding of transaction headings sometimes leads customers to contact the bank's customer relations department for further information, creating unnecessary traffic and overloading the workload of telephone advisors. For the major card issuers, Tink estimates that clarifying transactions and the information provided to customers could save them up to 22 million euros a year.

• Fighting fraud: Making it easier to read statements and identify transactions is also a key factor in the fight against fraud. It makes it easier for consumers to identify transactions for which they are not responsible.

MARKET PERSPECTIVE

• The solution presented today by Tink and Visa promises to optimize account statements. But it doesn't represent a total innovation, since a Spanish initiative made a similar promise just a year ago.

• At the time, Spanish digital bank Evo Banco, a subsidiary of Bankinter, offered a new transaction contextualization service. At the time, it relied on AI and location technologies to present customers with the exact time and place where their transactions had taken place.