Banking-as-a-Service: a powerful growth lever for Tech

Long reserved for traditional banks, banking products and services can now be integrated into the offerings of financial and non-financial companies through Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS).

Indeed, with the rise of new technologies, BaaS solutions have rapidly become powerful development tools for Tech players, who are now able to offer increasingly integrated and personalized payment solutions to their users.

BaaS: a real catalyst for the fintech ecosystem

Initially focused on a single financial service (payment, credit, insurance, etc.), fintechs are now offering increasingly integrated and comprehensive solutions by incorporating many services provided by traditional banks.

By expanding their range of services, these fintechs are thus improving the competitiveness of their offerings in order to retain their existing customers and acquire new ones.

However, the launch of these offers requires technical and operational capabilities (orchestration of payment processes, card issuance, etc.), as well as regulatory requirements (payment institution licenses, KYC procedures, etc.) that are likely to mobilize significant human and financial resources.

Thanks to the BaaS model, fintechs can therefore launch new services to accelerate their development with maximum agility and at a lower cost.

For example, as early as April 2016, Treezor allowed Qonto to launch an account opening offer for professionals by leveraging its API and its Electronic Money Institution license.

In 2021, Shine was approved as a payment institution by the Autorité de Contrôle Prudentiel et de Résolution (ACPR, the French Prudential Supervision and Resolution Authority). This represents a major step in Shine’s development. Thanks to Treezor’s offer for payment institutions, Shine and Treezor remain partners. Shine thus uses Treezor’s “core banking” functions via API. This continuity of activity has also allowed Shine not to disrupt its end–customers with service disruptions. Treezor hence remains Shine’s main technological partner and the issuer of its payment card.

BaaS for employee benefits

Because employee benefits often include monetary components, or at least monetizable components, BaaS is a natural fit in the ecosystem of the industry’s digitalization players.

Employee benefits notably include the distribution of vouchers dedicated to specific expenses (Titres Spécifiques de Paiement, or TSP): luncheon vouchers, gift vouchers and cards, culture vouchers, vacation vouchers, etc. Traditionally distributed in the form of physical vouchers, these vouchers are now increasingly dematerialized.

While this dematerialization has undeniable advantages for affiliated employees and traders, it does have its constraints, in particular the need to comply with the regulatory spending limits for TSPs and the limitation of payments to expenses for which the vouchers were intended.

In this context, BaaS plays a key role in the issuance of payment cards capable of integrating, in real time, the restrictions associated with TSPs: accepted stores, times during which they can be used, regulatory amounts… It is from this perspective that Swile, issuer of dematerialized TSPs, benefits from Treezor’s bank cards and infrastructure. Thus, thanks to Treezor’s embedded finance offer, Swile’s customers benefit from a cross-business and frictionless employee benefits experience via Swile’s application that includes an X-Pay–compatible payment card. BaaS significantly enriches the TSP-related user experience by offering:

1.  better management, by monitoring the balance in real time via an application or the possibility of supplementing purchases using one’s bank card beyond the authorized legal limit
2.  the security of the means of payment (the card can be quickly blocked in case of loss or theft).
3.  a practical advantage, as the vouchers are easier to carry and no longer need to be topped up at the time of payment (many stores did not give change for vouchers).
4. the possible centralization of different types of vouchers via a single payment method

BaaS for mobility

The multiplication of modes of transport combined with digital means allows users to schedule and pay for intermodal trips (using multiple modes of transport), resulting in the emergence of new Mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) solutions.

In large cities, high real–estate prices have led to longer commuting times for employees. In addition, in order to meet the challenges of the ecological transition, public policies are increasingly encouraging the use of soft mobility. Lastly, many employers want to give their employees more flexibility in their work and travel patterns.

In this context, MaaS is a particularly useful tool for implementing corporate mobility policies.

Indeed, similarly to employee benefits, their mobility can include several monetary management elements. For example, we could mention the Mobility Budget at Skipr (replacing the right to a company car) or the Sustainable Mobility Package at Betterway (with the employer taking care of employees’ travel expenses up to 800 euros per year, managing expense receipts and reimbursing expenses…)

So many use cases where BaaS players are helping MaaS players!

Betterway was thus able to link each Sustainable Mobility Package to a Mastercard payment card issued by Treezor; Treezor’s API ensures that the purchases paid for with this card are made with authorized traders and meet the package criteria.

Unlimited integration possibilities

Wherever monetary transactions are involved, BaaS is never far away. Indeed, this model allows today’s Tech players to offer a plethora of complementary services to strengthen their business model.

There are many examples of this in e-commerce where, thanks to BaaS, customers can access new payment methods or deferred payments (Buy now, pay later), while Marketplace sellers are seeing improved connectivity to their banks and benefiting from better tools for managing their cash flow.

In addition, BaaS plays a key role in the accessibility of financial services, as illustrated by the partnership signed in March 2021 between Treezor and PropTech Matera, to launch a payment account for condominium associations.

In addition to providing an improvement in the accounting management of these associations, the arrival of this type of account creates a new product that was previously absent from traditional banks’ catalogs.

Much more than a simple technological brick serving fintechs, BaaS is in fact a powerful transformation and optimization solution for many Tech players: employee benefits, MaaS, PropTechs, Marketplaces… A trend that is likely to last and that could well contribute to an even wider dissemination of financial services!