ING decides to close Yolt

Dutch banking group ING has announced the “phase out” of Yolt, its business-to-business Open Banking operations, on the basis “it is not feasible to achieve its ambitions with Yolt”.

The decision to shut it down entirely comes about a year after Yolt closed its consumer-facing personal finance management app to focus on the growth of Yolt Technology Services.

At the time, ING-backed Yolt said it will focus resources on getting its proprietary Open Banking solutions “into the hands of businesses more quickly”.

In a statement issued yesterday (30 August 2022), ING said: “After a thorough evaluation of all options, in the context of the rapidly evolving and changing market, ING has concluded that it is not feasible to achieve its ambitions with Yolt (formerly Yolt Technology Services).

“ING and its businesses continuously evaluate activities, including assessing whether they are likely to achieve the preferred scale in their market within a reasonable time frame. In this context, the evaluation has led to the decision to phase out Yolt.”

It intends to complete the phase-out process by the end of April 2023.

Yolt has informed clients of the decision and the planned wind down of their services but, in the meantime, plans to “continue to fulfil its contractual obligations”.

Yolt has also told its 48 employees, of which 19 are contractors, about the decision.

ING launched its B2B Open Banking operations in 2019, with Yolt becoming the first to make an Open Banking API call in the UK.