Revolut launches Connect, its open banking enterprise marketplace

Banking challenger and fintech unicorn Revolut has launched Connect, its marketplace for business banking.

Users of Revolut’s business accounts will now be able to connect to and build integrations with popular business apps like accounting software Freeagent and workplace messaging service Slack. Partnerships coming soon include Xero, Sage, Freshbooks and Quaderno.

The news comes as Revolut was announced to be in the top five of European fintech startups to watch in 2018, published last night as part of the popular Fintech50 list.

Read more: Fintech50: the hottest startups in Europe right now

The company says it is signing up over 120 businesses every day across the UK and Europe, with 60,000 registered enterprise users to date.

Existing users have sent over $350m (£264.3m) in transfers since the service launched last June, which Revolut estimates has saved its businesses over $14m in fees compared to using traditional financial institutions.

Read more: Revolut rolls out business banking

“Modern businesses work with a multitude of apps and tools that help them simplify their work,” said Domenico de Fano, a product owner for Business at Revolut, in a statement to Morning Wire.

“Obviously there is accounting, but also other things like payroll, communication, expense management and more. Traditional banks have historically been closed to the outside world: at Revolut, we want to do the opposite.

Revolut has also recently released its Open API for its business bank accounts, and is working on a function which will allow developers and users to ‘hack’ their accounts and personalise them for their own use cases.

De Fano continued:

“We are currently working on a developer portal to allow third-parties to build apps and integrations that they can then publish on Revolut Connect and open to the thousands of businesses on our platform. It’s an exciting perspective that will change the way businesses manage their finances, saving time and enabling new use cases.”

The fintech told Morning Wire this month that it is in the process of securing a brokerage licence from the Financial Conduct Authority, after announcing the development of a commission-free stock trading feature.

Read more: Revolut to launch commission-free stock trading, US launch pushed back