Financial technology firm Apiture has announced an expansion and reconfiguration of the platform it offers to financial institutions.
Rather than maintaining its Apiture Xpress and Apiture Open platforms, the Wilmington-based company has combined the strengths of both into one enhanced product, Apiture Digital Banking Platform, composed of five features its bank and credit union clients can brand and offer their customers:
- Consumer Banking with web and mobile user interfaces;
- Business Banking that enables business users to integrate these features with their consumer banking account;
- Account Opening, using a secure digital process that enables consumers and businesses to open and fund new accounts within minutes;
- API Banking, enabling financial institutions and fintechs to work with and connect application programming interfaces [APIs] available in the Apiture developer portal;
- Data Intelligence, in which Apiture data analysts work with client financial institutions to integrate previously siloed information for more effective sales, marketing, risk management and customer services.
“We realized at the end of 2021 we had made some great enhancements to our Xpress side,” Apiture CEO Chris Babcock said Thursday. “The Open side is built on the Finxact core, meaning everything is in real time. But rather than continuing on two sides, we took the best of both worlds and created one strong platform. It gives more clarity to the market and allows us to spend our research and development money more efficiently.”
Data intelligence is a relatively new offering, Babcock said. With data gathered from clients, the Apiture analyst team can advise clients how to use that information optimally to improve marketing and avoid fraud.
The new unified platform uses the Finxact core as well as 40 others, so Apiture clients don’t have to disconnect from any systems they now use.
“This is an add-on, not a take-away,” Babcock said. “For existing customers, it’s a rebrand.”
Most of Apiture’s clients are financial institutions with assets under $10 billion: community banks and credit unions that choose to outsource their digital banking development and deployment rather than maintain an in-house team. Customers of those institutions see their own bank’s brand on Apiture’s digital products and services.
Apiture, a joint venture between Live Oak Bancshares and Atlanta-based First Data Corp., launched in Wilmington in October 2017. Since then it has grown to employ more than 300 people, a large percentage of whom work at Apiture’s headquarters on the Live Oak campus.
Moving forward on one unified rail, Babcock sees an exciting time of growth ahead.
“When the business was founded in 2017, there was a lot of foundational work to get the business ready to go [continuing up] to the end of this past year. Now we’re ready to hit the ground running in terms of sales.”
Apiture has added more people to its sales team, fortified by
high marks in December from ratings company Javelin. Javelin’s 2021 Digital Banking Platform Vendor Scorecard ranked Apiture second on its “Best in Class” list.
“We’re thrilled that Javelin rated us highly,” Babcock said. “We have a great solution; now it’s time to get the word out, and we’re prepared to spend three times what we have been on sales and marketing.”
Research and development will continue to be a priority for Apiture as well, he added, with 25-30% of revenues spent in this area.
Correction: This version corrects a statement about the system on which Apiture's Digital Banking Platform is built.