UK-based Wonderful Payments has launched an enterprise division, Asima, which delivers developer-first Open Banking infrastructure for fintechs, platforms and merchants.
In a post on LinkedIn, Kieron James, chief executive officer of Wonderful Payments, said its new division is “the enterprise engine for UK Open Banking”.
According to Wonderful Payments Asima’s role is to provide the “plumbing”, or what it described as “a robust, developer-friendly, UK-based infrastructure layer that removes the complexity of connecting to multiple banks, while aligning to the latest technical standards”.
The launch of Asima comes after the Financial Conduct Authority announced last week that it has been named by the National Payments Vision (NPV) as the lead regulator for the next phase of UK Open Banking and set out the blueprint for a “Future Entity”, which will become the UK’s primary standard-setting body for Open Banking APIs.
Wonderful said the organisation is expected to be named UK Payments Initiative and will deliver “a smarter way to collect regular payments”, or “Smart Debits”.
Kieron James, chief executive officer of Wonderful Payments
James called it “the most significant moment for Open Banking since its launch”.
“With the Future Entity raising standards and UK Payments Initiative introducing Smart Debits, we now have the governance, the innovation and the legal certainty to deliver at scale. Asima is built to help businesses take full advantage of that opportunity,” he said.
Wonderful Payments said Asima will give merchants a way to reduce payment costs, improve settlement speed, and remove friction for customers, while consumers will benefit from faster, more transparent transactions.
Carmen James, head of operations at Wonderful Payments, added: “Asima is not just a technical platform. It helps businesses benefit from the efficiency and trust that Open Banking has earned, while keeping integration simple and costs predictable.”
Wonderful Payments also announced its migration to Google Cloud, providing scalability and security by enabling the business to deploy services faster and react in real time to market dynamics.
“Google Cloud gives us more than just servers; it provides a powerful toolkit of managed services, from BigQuery to Vertex AI. For us, this means we can focus on solving complex financial problems instead of managing infrastructure. For our customers, it means a faster, smarter, and fundamentally more secure service,” said John Blackmore, head of technology at Wonderful Payments.
