Finicity

Finicity, a Mastercard company, operates as an open banking platform providing real-time access to financial data and insights. Founded in 1999 by Steve Smith and Nick Thomas in Salt Lake City, Utah, the company was established with the goal of empowering consumers with greater control over their financial lives. The initial inspiration came from Smith's family practice of using an envelope-based budgeting system, which led to the creation of their first product in 2000, Mvelopes, a personal financial management application. This early product highlighted the need for direct, secure access to financial data, prompting the company to build an infrastructure connecting to thousands of financial institutions.

Co-founder Nick Thomas brought a strong technical background to the venture, having previously co-founded the Bluetooth Special Interest Group. Steve Smith, who serves as CEO, graduated from the University of Utah's finance program and began his career at the tech company Megahertz. Together, they pivoted the company from a consumer-facing budgeting app to a business-to-business (B2B) data aggregation platform. This platform allows fintech companies, banks, and other financial institutions to access consumer-permissioned financial data through a suite of APIs. The company's business model is usage-based, providing services for payments, credit decisioning, and financial management solutions.

The platform offers several key services, including transaction and statement aggregation, verification of income and assets, account owner verification, and data enrichment. These tools are used by clients like Rocket Mortgage and Experian to streamline processes such as loan and mortgage applications, facilitate account-based payments, and mitigate fraud. By 2015, Finicity had integrated with over 10,000 banks. A significant milestone occurred in June 2020 when Mastercard announced its acquisition of Finicity for an initial price of $825 million, with a potential additional earn-out, a deal that was cleared by the Department of Justice in November 2020. This acquisition integrated Finicity into Mastercard's global open banking strategy, aiming to expand its services in North America and other regions.

Keywords: open banking, financial data aggregation, API solutions, data verification, credit decisioning, asset verification, payment verification, financial management, income verification, account aggregation, fintech, financial data API, consumer-permissioned data, real-time financial data, data enrichment, ACH verification, fraud mitigation, lending solutions, mortgage technology, personal finance management