Before inking deals with the nation’s biggest banks and financial institutions, fintech Akoya was focused on secure open finance.
Show Notes
Before inking deals with the nation’s biggest banks and financial institutions, fintech Akoya was focused on secure open finance.
The Boston-based fintech, which originated as an application programming interface (API) division under Fidelity Investments, is now owned by several banks, including the $3.24 trillion Bank of America, $2.3 trillion Citi and $1.95 trillion Wells Fargo. The fintech tackled rampant screen scraping to shore up security at Fidelity before becoming an independent entity, Anil Mahalaha, co-founder and head of solutions at Akoya, tells Bank Automation News in this episode of “The Buzz” podcast.
“Back in 2018, we were part of the fidelity access API group that was turning up APIs for Fidelity Investments,” Mahalaha says. “The reason we were doing that is because Fidelity realized the amount of screen scraping that was going on, which was really concerning to Fidelity, where the fintechs had Fidelity usernames and passwords.
“What we started looking into is ‘how we can make it more secure for the customer and the customers’ data?,’” he says.
As Fidelity was building out its APIs and tokenization capabilities, the investment firm noticed similar issues occurring at related companies, Mahalaha says, adding that fintechs were scraping “much more” than just usernames and passwords through their aggregators. This prompted Fidelity and Akoya to reach out.
“With the help of The Clearing House, back in February 2020, Akoya became an independent company, which is jointly owned by about 11 North American banks and Fidelity Investments,” Mahalaha says.
Listen as he talks best practices for banks engaging with new and challenging data and gives details into Akoya’s upcoming developments.
What is The Buzz on Bank Automation News?
The new podcast covering current trends and intriguing topics in automation and beyond courtesy of Bank Automation News, the definitive source for insights and news surrounding automation in financial services.
Formerly Bank Innovation, since 2009 Bank Automation News has been at the forefront of tracking the evolution of digital banking. With the future of innovation pointing to opportunities in automation, we have transitioned the focus of our coverage to continue to provide insights and information that guide industry professionals to better results.
Automation is the next frontier of financial services technology. It will improve or transform most banking processes from customer experience to compliance, lending solutions and investment. Automation technology will create the greatest transformation at financial institutions since the digitization of financial services in the wake of the Credit Crisis. Banks that are not already investing in automation technologies must begin shifting their focus to remain competitive. This transition requires investment in training and educational resources.
Bank Automation News is the first and only news and education source dedicated to fostering this emerging segment of financial services technology.