Open finance technology provider Brankas was appointed by Visa as its first regional partner to provide live access to its open data products. For months, the two companies have been collaborating on data and money movement initiatives, where they have been leveraging each other's expertise in Open Finance, global payments, and data intelligence.

Todd Schweitzer, CEO and Co-founder of Brankas, said, "The shift to digital banking in Southeast Asia brings increased customer expectations from trusted financial institutions. We recognize a real opportunity to get to market a solution to help businesses offer a superior customer experience.

"With this partnership, businesses are unlocking accelerated transaction processing and payment alternatives to bolster their offerings. We are very excited to team up with Visa to increase financial inclusion across Southeast Asia, and our joint solutions will do just that.

These open finance products will enable financial institutions to immediately utilize today's transaction data to improve their solution offerings. TrustDecision (Tongdun) and IziData are two pilot customers already using the joint solutions. Brankas has successfully integrated Visa Cardholder Transaction Score and Visa's broad range of payment rails into its core solutions to deliver new out-of-the-box credit decisioning and payment products.

Digital banks, BNPLs, alternative lenders, e-commerce platforms, and Insurtechs seeking to enhance their credit decisioning capabilities can now access verified data that reveals cardholders' aggregated spend insights and creditworthiness. This dramatically improves risk evaluation methods and enables automated credit decisioning to facilitate faster processing of services such as loans and credit card issuance.

Brankas and Visa have also jointly developed a new Account-to-Account payment solution to enable more ways for domestic and cross-border money movement. Using Brankas' established banking network in Asia and Visa's global payment rails, banks and merchants can now provide customers with a new way to make instant payments while saving on transaction fees.

An e-commerce customer, for instance, would be able to make secure cross-border payments directly from their bank account without entering card credentials.

Tareq Muhmood, Group Country Manager, Regional Southeast Asia & SVP of Global Client Management at Visa, said, "As a trusted engine of commerce, Visa is uniquely positioned to help people, businesses, and governments make more confident financial decisions and move money securely."

He added, "Brankas is a company that combines core banking, data, payments, and issuance products in a single stack, enabling their customers to launch new and innovative solutions rapidly. Visa is excited to partner with Brankas and takes advantage of its extensive banking network in Southeast Asia to serve the unbanked and underbanked better."

Brankas is no stranger to growth enablement for its 80+ enterprise customers across Southeast Asia in banking, fintech, payment, and e-commerce. Its flagship product, Open Finance Suite, enables financial institutions to open up new revenue and distribution channels in weeks.

By becoming API-enabled, these financial institutions can allow authorized third-party partners to facilitate payment, account opening, lending, and data-sharing services. Earlier in 2022, Netbank launched its first suite of digital banking solutions in the Philippines on the back of Brankas' Open Finance Suite.

Visa previously participated in Brankas' Series B funding round after Brankas participated in Visa's AP Accelerator program.