Aiming for Finance's Champions League

I would like to talk to you about figo. No, I don’t mean Luis Figo, the second most capped footballer for Portugal and former Barcelona and Real Madrid midfielder, I’m talking about figo, short for "finance on the go", an exciting start-up with a big future and now potentially hugely significant role to play in the financial industry after its humble beginnings in Munich. It was initially developed as a banking app for consumers, however, figo was quickly turned into a business to business (b2b) startup in 2014 once the business potential had been spotted. Now, more than 1000 developers are using the figo banking API (Application Programming Interface) worldwide.

But before we continue I should mention what an API actually is. An API is a set of routines, protocols, and tools for building software applications. It’s the engine under the hood of all our connectivity from mobile devices to desktops linking all of our data together. In plain terms an API is the messenger that takes requests, and tells the system what you want to do before returning the response back. Imagine that the API is the waiter in a restaurant linking your food choices to the kitchen and back.

So what makes figo so special? Figo is Europe’s first banking service provider! Ultimately they are about making processes easier for end users. Figo’s initial business idea was to provide a user-friendly banking app that allowed customers to have access to multiple accounts via a single platform. This initial idea has since blossomed into a fully-fledged API that provides a "banking as a service" platform that is now bridging the gap between the modern services of its customers and more than 55 million online banking accounts in Germany and Austria. This means aggregating multiple service providers’ services through a single interface.

Almost none of this would have been possible without the Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2). With the intent to standardise, reduce barriers and further develop the financial industry across Europe it was the answer that figo had been waiting for. In what was once a very unclear and fragmented section of the industry, PSD2 has lain down the first steps for allowing future innovation that could bring members of the banking community and new market players closer together.

And this is where Deutsche B?rse comes in. Recent developments within the industry point towards the fact that banks are on their way to becoming tech companies. For example, Deutsche B?rse’s FinTech Hub not only connects FinTech startups but could eventually integrate these offerings into Deutsche B?rse’s own infrastructure and create a framework to allow for positive cooperation between Deutsche B?rse and FinTech companies. Figo has already made material progress in reducing complexity for end users of financial services. By working with Deutsche B?rse, they now have the opportunity to build even further on this.

Just as with football clubs competing in their national leagues, for a leading market infrastructure provider like Deutsche B?rse, staying ahead of the game is key. That means working with people and companies who have already shown exactly this pedigree. And as André M. Bajorat, CEO of figo, said: "Deutsche B?rse represents a perfect partner for figo - a financially involved investor that is at the same time a strategic partner." And as I said when we acquired a stake in Figo, given the changing financial landscape, figo has shown that it can establish itself as a reliable partner and build up a fantastic FinTech ecosystem around itself. The future is certainly exciting and we look forward to supporting their growth and also learning from the innovation they are driving.