Tink Teams With Splitwise to Offer Pay-by-Bank

Visa-owned payments platform Tink has launched an open banking partnership with expense-sharing app Splitwise.

The collaboration, announced Monday (April 22), brings Pay by Bank to Splitwise users, letting them make direct payments from within the Splitwise app, starting in the U.K.

“We have always believed that any customer of ours should be able to pay their friends or family back securely and safely, right from within our app,” Jonathan Bittner, Splitwise’s co-founder and CEO, said in a news release provided to PYMNTS.

“Our open-banking partnership with Tink is enabling a long-awaited step towards that goal. Tink has been an ideal partner for our Pay by Bank functionality, and we are eager to expand open-banking solutions with them in other regions,” he added.

Before joining forces with Tink, the release said, Splitwise users had to exit the app, go to their banking app to initial a payment, and then go back to Splitwise to confirm they had settled up with their friends or loved ones. The new partnership lets users link their bank account and settle in seconds via a bank-to-bank payment.

The partnership is happening as account-to-account (A2A) payments, otherwise known as pay-by-bank, are growing in popularity with consumers.

Thirty-six percent of U.S. consumers use this payment method, according to information from the PYMNTS Intelligence study “Tracking the Digital Payments Takeover: Consumer Familiarity Controls Account-to-Account Payment Growth.”

“Convenience also plays a role in consumer satisfaction with A2A payments, particularly in peer-to-peer (P2P) use cases, according to the study,” PYMNTS wrote in February. “Platforms like PayPal, Venmo and Cash App provide user-friendly experiences, leading to high satisfaction rates among more than 60% of A2A payment users.”

An added benefit to A2A payments is their simplicity and ease of use, as they bypass traditional card networks and intermediaries, letting users avoid sharing sensitive financial information, and lowering the risk of fraud.

Tink’s teaming with Splitwise is part of a series of recent collaborations involving the company. Last month, it announced it was working with Berlin-based payment processor Micropayment to allow Europe-based merchants to offer pay-by-bank at checkout.

Also in March, Payop added Tink’s pay-by-bank offering to the eCommerce checkout options it offers to merchants in Europe.