Double-digit million-pound losses at two European open banking startups, but revenues increase

Startup unicorn TrueLayer and Yapily, which has raised nearly £60 million in funding, are startups that are making a name for themselves in the increasingly competitive area of open banking.

Open banking payment platform TrueLayer, backed by Tiger Global and Stripe, provides developers with a portal to access open banking APIs and integrate bank payments into their apps and websites.

The company's clients include fintech Revolut and online car retailer Cazoo and TrueLayer is hoping open banking tech will prove a popular alternative to card payments.

Figures published at Companies House show that London-headquartered TrueLayer Group lost £40.3 million in the year ending December 2022, compared to losses of £78.1 million the year previous.

Revenues came in at £4.1 million, a 56 percent increase from £2.6 million the year previous, helped by a surge in payment volumes.

Profits were dented by a big increase in administrative expenses which increased by more than £32 million to £63.4 million, largely down to an increase from 125 to 231 in headcount.

According to the figures, TrueLayer, which has received over £220 million in funding, is the market leader in open banking payments in the UK, Ireland, Spain, and France and also has “significant market share” in the Netherlands and Germany.

Highlights of the year, it said, were TrueLayer becoming the first open banking provider in the UK to support different recurring payment types through a single API.

Earlier this week, the London-headquartered startup announced it had processed one million variable recurring payment (VRPs) transactions in a month.

VRPs are recurring payments leveraging open banking which allow consumers to approve transactions that vary in amount from month-to-month.

A good overview of TrueLayer’s results is written up in The Business of Payments blog here.

Meanwhile, financial figures for Yapily, the API provider, have also been published at Companies House.

Losses at Yapily Limited came in at £21.5 million in the year ending December 2022, an increase from the £8.4 million it lost the year previous.

Revenues at London-headquartered Yapily, which has raised funding from VCs including LocalGlobe, Sapphire, and Lakestar, came in at £2.8. million in the year ending December 2022, compared to £1.7m the year previous.

Yapily said its loss was a “reflection of its deliberate growth strategy”, as it made key investments in the period.

Highlights in the period, it said, included increasing its customer base by 70 percent and payment volumes increasing more than four-fold.

Yapily’s API connects with 2,000 banks in 19 countries.

Lead image: Photo by James Padolsey.