Next-gen core banking provider Tuum has announced a partnership with bank orchestration platform Numeral set to help financial institutions and fintechs expand across Europe. The collaboration seeks to empower both FIs and fintechs to launch and expand across Europe and the UK in an efficient manner, leveraging extensive and resilient pan-European payment infrastructure and the rapid speed to market of new offerings and services enabled by both solutions.

Tuum – Numeral partnership details As per the information detailed in the announcement, the Tuum – Numeral partnership introduces a modern core banking platform that connects to the EU, the UK, Nordics, and CEE payment rails via partner banks, done through a single API connection. Numeral’s platform is designed specifically for financial institutions and fintechs building payment products on top of their banking partners, and through a single API and central dashboard, it enables simplified bank integrations, expedited payments, and real-time data visibility on accounts and payments. A survey conducted by Numeral on European consumers highlights that customers are 83% more likely to use financial services that provide local IBANs instead of foreign ones, and 25% of consumers reported experiencing IBAN discrimination when leveraging a foreign one, discrimination that negatively impacts customer trust in financial services that don’t offer local IBANs.

Through Numeral’s extensive bank integrations and Tuum’s modular core banking platform, financial institutions and fintech are enabled access to EU and UK payment schemes of the likes of SEPA, Bacs, and FPS as indirect participants via integration with multiple UK and EU partner banks. This offers access to partner banks’ local virtual IBANs or issuing their own local IBANs fostering higher customer trust and combating IBAN discrimination in an effective manner. The press release further details that building a resilient payment infrastructure is paramount for financial services companies, with recent instances of bank failures having showcased the vulnerability of relying on a single partner bank.

In these situations, should the partner bank’s payment systems cease to operate, businesses would no longer be able to send or receive payments on behalf of their customers. Tuum and Numeral’s joint proposition helps financial institutions partner with multiple banks and create an extensive and resilient payment infrastructure, free of any requirement to build additional integrations and operate complex systems. This approach is believed to help mitigate the risks associated with relying solely on one bank and to ensure uninterrupted payment services for customers.

Commenting on the announcement, Édouard Mandon, CEO of Numeral stated that given how scale impacts unit economics in the fintech and financial services industry, building a pan-European payment infrastructure is critical for financial services and fintech companies looking to access a broader market, acquire more customers, and achieve profitability. However, doing so internally turns resources away from core products, just like building a core banking system internally can be both a risky and lengthy process. Per their statement, Tuum’s approach to modular core banking is in alignment with Numeral’s, and financial services companies should be able to build systems that correspond to their needs from readily available building blocks.

Adding on this, Jean Souto, VP of Global Partnerships at Tuum said that becoming pan-European is a game-changer for financial institutions, yet venturing into new geographies could bring forth challenges such as the strain on resources, as establishing operations across different countries requires substantial capital and operational expense. The spokesperson advised that with Tuum and Numeral’s joint proposition, companies are enabled to leverage the power associated with a modular core banking platform and a pan-European bank orchestration platform, a synergy that allows them to launch their services efficiently, minimising resource requirements while scaling their operations across Europe and the UK in an expedited manner. .