Apiture announced Tuesday the launch of its cloud-based digital banking platform that consolidates its existing products, Apiture Xpress and Apiture Open, into one solution.

Flexibility powered by an application programming interface (API) is central to the new platform that allows banks and credit unions to embed services from third-party solutions, Chris Cox, the digital banking fintech’s chief operating officer, told Bank Automation News.

“We encourage and can easily enable our financial institution clients to work with whichever third-party solutions they want,” Cox said. “It’s our job through API banking, and through our consumer and business banking platforms, to seamlessly integrate whatever third-party solutions our clients need to better serve their unique customer basis. And that’s a big differentiator for us.”

To support that, the new platform allows banks to leverage APIs to connect with services and fintechs.

The Aite Novarica Group ranked Apiture, along with Alkami Technology, as “vendors to watch” in its Sept. 2021 report, “Aite Matrix: U.S. Digital Banking Point Solution.” It competes against larger players such as Backbase, MX, Q2 Software and NCR Corporation, primarily targeting financial institutions in the $500 million to $10 billion in assets range, the research firm noted.

“With over 400 U.S. bank and credit union clients live in the United States, Apiture is a growing fintech alternative to incumbent digital banking providers,” the research firm wrote in its report. Among its clients are $8.4 billion Live Oak Bank, $457 million First Reliance Bank and $312 million Cross Keys Bank.

Crunchbase reports the 310-employee company has raised $30 million over two funding rounds.

The Wilmington, N.C.-based fintech as part of the rollout also introduced a new data intelligence tool that allows financial institutions to connect siloed data from across applications and data sources — including third parties — into a common data layer, Cox told BAN.

“We’re making it really easy to plug in additional data sources into the platform — a really broad set of data, some from our own platform, some from third parties, that plugs into a common data layer,” he said. “We are creating tools that make it really easy for the financial institutions to use that data, visualize that data, make inferences and do analytics with the data.”

The data analytics tools will allow financial institutions to better understand and market to their customers, Cox added. For instance, data might show that a customer is making a monthly car payment to another lender and, in turn, would allow the bank to extend a loan refinance offer to the customer, he said.

The platform’s consumer banking solution includes integrations with more than 200 fintechs and 40 core solutions, as well as turnkey web and mobile user interfaces, Cox explained. Apiture’s account opening solution, which is also part of the platform, provides a secure process for both consumers and businesses to open and fund accounts within minutes. The business banking solution offers users features that integrate with their consumer banking account, he noted.

The entire platform is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) based, multitenant solution. That underpinning means new features are automatically rolled out to every client, Cox added.

“This brings a product that was already really well positioned to serve the needs of financial institutions into the market, and just puts a really fine point on the services that banks today really need to grow,” he said. “That’s what we’re all about.”

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