Tink, the European open banking platform, announces PayPal as a strategic investor

Tink, the European open banking platform that recently raised €56 million in new funding, is disclosing that PayPal has become a strategic investor.

The online payments giant joins a long list of existing backers that includes U.S.-based Insight Venture Partners, Sunstone, SEB, Nordea Ventures and ABN AMRO Digital Impact Fund. Individuals such as Christian Clausen, former chairman of the European Banking Federation, and Nikolay Storonsky, co-founder of banking app Revolut, are also investors.

Originally launched in Sweden in 2013 as a consumer-facing finance app with bank account aggregation at its heart, Tink has since repositioned its offering to provide the same underlying technology and more to banks and other financial service providers that want to ride the open banking/PSD2 train.

Through various APIs, Tink provides four pillars of technology: “Account Aggregation,” “Payment Initiation,” “Personal Finance Management” and “Data Enrichment.” These can be used by third parties to roll their own standalone apps or integrated into existing banking applications.

Meanwhile, with its investment, PayPal has agreed to partner with Tink to leverage its account aggregation technology to “improve product experiences” for PayPal customers. What this means in practice isn’t entirely clear, although it is likely PayPal could use open banking for easier and more secure on-boarding. Another obvious use case would be to check your bank balance prior to initiating a debit card payment or use your transaction history in relation to PayPal Credit.

Adds Jennifer Marriner, VP of global markets and partnerships of PayPal:: “Open banking is transforming financial services, allowing customers to more easily move and manage their money. Tink has developed the infrastructure and data services for this new financial world and we’re excited to work together to continue to democratise financial services”.