How we’re helping fintech startups scale

January 22, 2020 | Louise Basse

At Nordic API Gateway, we believe innovation should be for everyone. That’s why we’re always excited to help startups create cutting-edge solutions that challenge the established industry and set innovation free.

But how do you get started? And how do you build new solutions on top of financial data?

To answer that, we sat down with Plata’s CEO, Rasmus Meilvang, and talked about how his startup has used Nordic API Gateway to revolutionise the lending industry.

Let’s see what he said.

Make the next step easier with partners

Set to transform lending to the benefit of the consumer, Plata is a Copenhagen-based startup that’s on a mission to create a fair and more transparent lending solution with less fees and lower interest rates.

To do that, Plata created the first peer-to-peer lending platform in Denmark that allows individuals to invest and borrow money from each other at competitive interest rates.

But to create a secure and data-driven lending option, Plata needed access to financial data – and that’s how Nordic API Gateway came into the picture, Rasmus explains:

“I don’t believe startups like Plata need to be the best at everything they do: KYC, credit scoring, account aggregation and more. Instead, we need to focus on what we’re really good at – and then find the right partners and team up with them to offer the best product experience. That’s why we decided to use Nordic API Gateway to create data-driven lending solutions”.

Challenging the established lending industry

With more than 15 years of experience in the financial industry, Rasmus has been following the development in the financial services closely for the past many years.

When the EU legislation PSD2 was introduced late last year to create more competition and transparency in the financial sector, the Plata CEO saw it as a huge benefit for consumers across Europe. 

Now, smaller businesses and startups get to challenge the established financial industry to make more consumer-centric solutions. According to Rasmus, there is a major need for that in the lending industry specifically: 

“For many years, I’ve experienced how difficult it has been to build financial solutions that are both smart and cheap for consumers. Banks have traditionally put most of the costs on the consumers – but with Open Banking and PSD2 in place, we’re able to challenge banks and offer new lending services at a fraction of the price for the consumers”, Plata’s CEO explains in our talk.

Do you want to know how you can take advantage of open banking to create better services? Feel free to drop us a line or visit our open banking blog for more inspirational use cases.