MX Expands Its Open Banking Footprint Via Deals With Sionic And FuturePay

MX Technologies Inc. has expanded its reach into the emerging field of open banking through partnerships with Sionic Mobile Corp., a provider of consumer-to-business payments technology, and FuturePay Inc., a provider of digital revolving credit solutions for e-commerce merchants and their customers.

Sionic is embedding MX’s instant account-verification and account-aggregation services into its consumer microsite and mobile software development kit. As a result, Sionic merchants will be able to allow consumers to log in to their bank account and automatically link the account for Pay-by-Bank payments at checkouts using a ULink profile. ULink, which was developed with Visa Inc., allows consumers to send money in real time using digital tokens that represent consumers’ bank-account numbers.

One advantage of account-to-account payments at the point-of-sale is that they are a low-cost alternative, for merchants, to card-based payments. Sionic, which earlier this month, launched the industry’s first real-time payments service enabling bank-to-bank digital cash deposits at the point-of-sale, charges a flat rate of 1% per transaction, compared to the average 3% for cards. “Merchants can offer special perks to consumers paying with their bank accounts versus cards and consumers can return to more sensible spending” by avoiding increased credit card debt and the risk they will default on a BNPL loan, Sionic chief executive and founder Ronald Herman says by email. 

In addition to its deal with Sionic, MX announced Tuesday that FuturePay will integrate MX’s instant account-verification and data-cleansing apps with FuturePay’s MYTab digital revolving credit platform for online merchants. MYTab allows e-commerce merchants to offer online shoppers a credit line for making purchases with any merchant in the FuturePay network. 

FuturePay says MYTab, improves upon credit cards and buy now pay later loans by providing attributes similar to credit cards, such as offering flexible long-term payment options. Consumers can apply for a credit line of $1,000 to $5,000. MYTab provides instant credit decisioning and financing.

“Since we are providing long-term credit, FuturePay is required to be much more rigorous with customer underwriting than traditional BNPL installment-loan providers, which is why we chose MX,” FuturePay chief executive Tim Harris says in a prepared statement. MX’s data engine cleanses and categorizes FuturePay’s customer transaction data, he says, “helping us verify people based on their consumer behavior. Our need to know their financial profile over the long haul is where MX will really pay off.”