London-headquartered open banking platform Railsbank will further its APAC expansion with the launch of its Australia business.
Railsbank enters the market via a tie-up with Australia’s first neobank Volt, according to a statement, which will be its only embedded finance partner in the country.
Embedded finance is defined as the integration a financial service with a traditionally non-financial service or product such as access to loans on retail e-commerce platforms.
Volt will also engage Railbank’s global network of partners and customers to enable companies to «prototype, launch and scale financial products within their own customer experience».
iTunes as Success Story
According to Railsbank co-founder and CEO Nigel Verdon, the British fintech provides deconstructed financial components, tools for product managers, and APIs that enable easy reassembly for effective banking experiences, likening its potential with success stories in other sectors.
«These can then be reconstructed into financial use cases. This is what Apple did with iTunes. They deconstructed the music industry and changed the economics of the industry,» said Verdon.
«This deal has a personal resonance for me as one of my ancestors, Sir George Verdon, was general manager and a founding father of the ANZ Bank, so it's good to be back in Australia again!»
APAC Expansion
In addition to Australia, which it considers a highly strategic market, Railsbank aims to deepen its footprint elsewhere in Asia later this year including Japan, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.
Outside of the U.K. and Australia, it also has offices in Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, the U.S., Germany, and Lithuania.
Its list of major backers includes Visa, following an equity fundraising round last November which attracted $37 million for its global expansion.
