Tink´s Current Business Model

67 the mean regarding the amount of interaction is 4.3, suggesting that our sample interacts relatively little with their respective banks.

Following the question of a potential switch from their current bank, the highest variance of the survey presented itself at 10.8: When asked to agree or disagree with the statement “It is easy to switch bank if I want to”, answers ranged from the minimum 0 to the maximum 10, and a mean of 5.6. Although not providing us with a possible imagery of how easy it is for a Main Street Business to switch banks in Sweden, it is clear that perception of this predicament presents different feelings. The same lack of consensus is provided when asked if it is easy to finance the business. Once again, the answers range from 0 to 10, with a variance of 10 < and a mean right in the middle at 5.0. Similarly, although not as spread out, our sample seems to have different opinions on how pleasant their bank is to interact with. Once again, they can be denominated as moderately positive with a mean of 5.9, but like with many other situations, the variance is high and there is no apparent pattern in terms of e.g. their perception of their bank-relationship. In contrast however, our respondents do think that it is quite easy to have a total overview over their financial situation, with only 3 businesses reporting an answer

<5. Instead, the overall mean is quite high at 7.3, and a variance at 5.1.

68 traditional way of making revenue was to silo the customer insights, and that the banks thus controlled their customers – instead of the other way around. However, as the consumer application was not viewed as the most promising strategy, and as PSD2 emerged, the business model pivoted accordingly (I1). As such, their value delivery is now, according to Interviewee 2 (I2), primarily as a business to business organization (B2B), offering their API to financial institutions so that they could reap the benefits of Open Banking, and provide their customers with better services. With a business idea that they today describe as “the tools that allow anyone – from big banks and FinTechs to start-ups – to build the future of financial services across Europe.” (Tink, 2020b), one can describe Tink’s value creation strategy as collecting banking information across Europe into an easily implemented API so that their customers can offer their customers more insightful, quicker and personified solutions. They do this as they wish to change the banking industry for the better, meaning to untangle and change the old industry that lacked competition and momentum (ibid). For their vision of how the market might develop, I1 describes it like this:

“From our perspective it does not really matter who wins in the market. What we are hoping for is that what we are doing is a part of what unlocks the market.” (I1)

With this in mind, it might not come to a surprise that a core choice in their intention to constantly being on the forefront of innovation is to give access to over 5000 independent developers to conjure up their own Open Banking solutions. As such, their value capture has not only expanded beyond their revenue driving customers, but it is also making sure that more value is created based on their technologies. Hence, it is easy to see that Tink is driven by their belief that innovation within banking should catch up to other markets, and their ambition is to be a key player in driving this innovation (I1).

“We want to attract all those that can leverage our technology, so that we can build the industry’s future big corporations.” (I2)

5.2.1.1 Tink´s Value Proposition

Through Tink´s connection to more than 250 banks all over Europe, allowing them to reach more than 250 million bank customers, the company have grown into becoming one of Europe´s leading

69 Open Banking platforms. With their products offering being within payment initiation, enrichment of transactions, aggregation of financial data and finance management tools (Tink, 2020a), the company enable banks, FinTechs and start-ups to develop financial services that are data-driven.

“Our API offers one access point to financial data from across Europe – as well as the ability to offer insights and actionable advice – whether it’s through our full-service enterprise offering or

our self-service platform for developers.” (Tink, 2020a).

With the following value proposition: “Our goal is to help people understand their finances, empower them to make smarter choices and ultimately bring financial happiness. We believe that managing money should be effortless and rewarding” (Tink, 2020d), Tink has partnered up with companies such as BNP Paribas Fortis, SEB, Klarna, Paypal and Nordea and provided them with their services. Among the companies Tink have worked together with in developing services, Avanza is one example where their technology provided them with a solution to better deliver their financial services. As the largest stockbroker in Sweden, Avanza had problems with users dropping off before completing their transferring of investment. This problem was identified due to users not knowing their investment details and account numbers, and thus needed to both look them up and fill them in manually. Eventually, causing many of the users to drop out of the process. The solution to the problem identified by Avanza was a system that automatically prefilled and aggregated users’

financial data. As such, the automatic process resulted in users´ no longer needing to know their financial data by heart and having to manually fill it in. This account aggregation solution provided to Avanza resulted in the stockbroker increasing their customer conversion rate by more than 150 % (hub.tink.com, 2020a).

An additional use case explaining how Tink has delivered value to one of its customers, is the service provided to SBAB, a company that is offering mortgages to more than 270 000 people on the Swedish market. SBAB wanted to introduce their services to more people on the market by providing both existing and potential customers with the possibility of them getting better deals with regards to their interest rates. By using account aggregation, SBAB introduced the new product called `The Interest Rate Showdown`. In this, customers could compare their existing interest expenses with what SBAB could offer them, and thus possibly get a better deal and save money by switching mortgage broker.

With the entire process being entirely automatic, it took a couple of minutes and customers could

70 easily move their mortgage to SBAB with a few clicks. The results showed that the product provided 8 out of 10 customers with the possibility of getting a better interest rate (hub.tink.com, 2020b).

Both of the above examples are use cases and stories provided by Tink, where they display two different examples they in which their services have provided value to their customers. In turn, Tink´s customers have been able to provide the private consumer with more and better financial services.

However, Tink was initially founded with the purpose of providing value directly to the private consumer with their B2C services, and has in the recent years transformed and pivoted their business model into becoming a B2B company. Thus, the following two sections will present Tink and the financial industry prior to Open Banking, followed by findings from Tink and the industry post Open Banking.