Flinks introduces new features to Open Banking solution

Flinks has added two features to its Open Banking solution ‘Outbound’, which aim to provide Canadian financial institutions with an out-of-the-box solution to launch their Open Banking capabilities.

The new “core out-of-the-box” features, ‘Hosted Consent Management’ and ‘Analytics Dashboard’, have been introduced to Flinks’ Outbound.

The features are designed to help credit unions and small- to mid-sized financial institutions overcome some of the challenges they face, as the Canadian Government prepares to legislate consumer-driven banking, with an Open Banking framework that is due to go live by 2025.

Jimmy Chung, product marketing manager at Flinks, wrote in a blog post: “Through extensive discussions with leaders in Canadian financial institutions and our hands-on experience assisting key clients in the launch of their Open Banking APIs, we identified the main challenge: limited budget and resources.

“This challenge is particularly acute for small- to medium-sized financial institutions striving to develop and maintain new and existing infrastructures, like complying with Open Banking requirements.”

Flinks’ Hosted Consent Management is described as a fully-customisable and white-labelled “portal” that integrates into an institution’s banking platform, enabling their customers to view, manage and revoke consent, as well as provide an overview of their historical activity.

The new Analytics Dashboard provides institutions with instant insights into customer behaviour, such as “who, when and what accounts your customers are connecting and sharing their data with”.

FirstOntario Credit Union – one of the country’s biggest credit unions – has already chosen Flinks and Everlink Payment Services to deliver its Open Banking functionality.

At the end of 2023, small business accounting platform Xero partnered with Flinks to give its North American small business customers access to direct and secure bank feeds, including with the National Bank of Canada and EQ Bank.