The next stage of the Volt – AFG app collaboration has been revealed, with Open Banking specialists Frollo announced as the tech behind the app.
Frollo’s involvement will not only see them build the app, but also integrate Open Banking capabilities into it so that customers and brokers will be able to access and share data seamlessly within the product.
“We have been partnered with Volt for a long time: we built their Volt Labs app,” said Piet van den Boer, head of marketing at Frollo. “We’ve always done the personal finance management side of their app, too.”
“With the new banking-as-a-service app, they were looking for a partner to help them build it from the ground up and to integrate it with their core banking system, providing all the features such as payments, card management and then integration with Open Banking.”
“That’s us. We’ve built that whole app, which they can now white label to BaaS clients and which will probably come in the next few weeks, and will replace the Volt banking app that they have as a direct-to-consumer business. AFG is the first to launch with Baas white label.”
This is an Australia-first product, but the tech is already commonplace in other parts of the world, with companies such as N26 in Germany and Revolut in the UK at the forefront.
“There’s two parts to it: the BaaS component and the Open Banking component,” said van den Boer.
The BaaS component is something that we help Volt offer to their customers, and they are the lead on it. They’ve partnered with AFG and they’ll likely have more partnerships soon, and we’ll be there to help them with those clients. That’s their strategy and we help them to deliver.”
“For us, we’ve now built this banking app, and if we can build it for Volt, we can build it for anyone. That’s where we see a lot of opportunity.”
“With the Open Banking part of it: if you look at the UK, a good example is Revolut, but also mainstream banks that have Open Banking functionality in their apps. Account aggregation, across all accounts and institutions, and it’s one of the first use cases.”
“Banks want to be their customer’s main banking app, and they do that by offering a full view of their finances so that they don’t have to go anywhere else to see them. Of course, then you can look for things that increase engagement and retention, or cross-selling and upselling, because you have that strong customer relationship.”
