Unit’s Application Development Environment Looks to Save Fintechs Time With New Apps

Looking to help fintechs speed development of new banking applications, Unit, a banking-as-a-service platform, announced Thursday a pilot production environment that allows fintechs to instantly build and validate applications using real funds.

The new product is expected to enable fintechs to build and test live bank accounts and issue virtual cards in a live environment with confidence they will work as intended in a matter of minutes, in some cases. That could yield fully tested, market-ready products in a matter of weeks, as opposed to months or even years, according to Unit. Developers can sign up for a free account through Unit and begin building and testing new products in a live environment immediately, the company says.

“With Unit, we were building our [minimum viable product] in minutes and using our app with real funds in the real world,” Kevin Cox, cofounder of Savvy Technologies Inc., which enables businesses to offer or improve their health benefits, says in a prepared statement. “We were able to build a fully functional and secure product in a live environment with confidence that it would work as expected.”

During the past year, Unit says, it has enabled more than 100 companies to launch production-ready banking products in weeks when it previously took more than year. Banking services are provided by Blue Ridge Bank N.A.

“We’ve had customers go from no code to fully live in 21 days,” Itai Damti, Unit’s chief executive, says in a prepared statement. “We’ve heard from many clients that the magic moment for them was creating an application, having it approved in three seconds, creating a debit card, adding it to Apple Pay, and buying a $5 coffee in a coffee shop across the street. Now all developers and founders can have this same ‘aha’ moment and test their product in the real world.”

Since its launch in late 2020, Unit has signed more than 100 clients and raised $70 million in funding.