Tandem acquires Pariti

Tandem bank has acquired the 95,000 user base app pariti.

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For me, from reading news articles and posts, it really seems like Tandem’s original proposition is floundering, and the only way for them to move forward is to use VC money to acquire other banks / startups. I’m not impressed - Tandem looked very promising, but that’s now starting to fade.

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Pariti is essentially an account aggregator - I really don’t see what value it will bring to Tandem, and even if it had value I don’t see how it wouldn’t be cheaper to just build it in house. The effort to integrate Pariti with Tandem’s system in a future-proof way would IMO be more expensive than just building the thing in house in the first place.

I am quite sad and worried about all those account aggregators popping up all over the place. First off, it is not complicated to make an account aggregator; any decent developer can make one in a week; you get some numbers from the bank’s APIs, crunch them, display the results. Done. Seeing how much money has been poured into these companies with no clear business model is worrying.

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Just had a play with it. It’s no more than Tandem tried to do last summer. Won’t be a threat to Emma, I don’t think. Would be good to know when Monzo are going to put other accounts in the marketplace, as I’d much rather use one app for everything eventually.

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The account aggregators have the same business model as the challenger banks, only they don’t have the cost of running a bank and a marketplace makes more sense for an aggregator to do it, as they will have a more complete picture of a person’s finances.

Just to let you know, Monzo are looking into aggregation too & I’d be suprised if they don’t offer it, as it’ll leave a big gap.

A ‘control center for you finances’ doesn’t make a lot of sense if it doesn’t include a view of all of your money, wherever it is.
Plus, adding the other accounts removes a barrier to switching for people who need to keep their legacy account open because they have a large overdraft, for example. Or for people who use a credit card from their bank & can see it, along with their current account, in their bank’s mobile app.

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Exactly, though the question at that point is ‘why bother being a bank?’

Lending (to earn revenue), service (for acquisition, earning loyalty, marketing), FSCS protection (trust), data, control of the end-to-end experience & I’m probably forgetting a few things :slight_smile:

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Monzo have said they will only offer a current account. Will enough people sit in an overdraft at 50p per day to make it pay? Especially given the fact that to protect the integrity of their marketplace they will need to suggest cheaper ways to users that are in an overdraft of borrowing that money from other companies.

The rest don’t really matter for an aggregator app surely? They’ll get data from the linked bank account APIs, suggest products based on that data, make money from referral fees.

That’s all Monzo will be doing with the exception that they also have an expensive current account service to run. Which will, in fact, become quite a large barrier to people using the monzo app as an aggregator.

Seems to me that Monzo will face many of the same challenges that the high street banks will due to open banking, in respect to their current account.

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