Fintech startups in Italy begin to provide open banking services to make life easier for consumers

Switcho, an Italian digital fintech platform that brings innovations in expenses management, has upgraded its services by teaming up with Salt Edge, pioneer in open banking.

„Switcho becomes the first company in Italy able to provide insights on expenses and at the same time offer the chance to take actions about it, straight from the app, in order to save on those expenses,” according to the press release.

The liberty of providing various utility services, like energy, gas, telephone, home and mobile internet, has encouraged intensive price competitiveness. While this is definitely an advantage to the final user, one must be aware of all suppliers’ offerings and how they relate to their specific needs. Most of the time, the research of these suppliers, gathering information on their offers and prices, comparing those prices between them, and then reporting it all to the current expenses is too big of a fuss. Usually, people tend to abandon it halfway and stick to the current plan. But that’s not all. Besides finding the right provider, switching from the current one to a more suitable provider involves bureaucracy and several weeks for the procedure to be finalised.

Switcho has found a way to solve that and ease up Italian consumers’ lives. It aims to become a broad service-offering platform that helps users manage their recurring expenses in smarter ways.

For instance, with Salt Edge’s Account Information, Switcho accesses bank transactional data and information on the payees for each bill from 500+ Italian banks. Adding that information to the suppliers on the market, the company analyses them and offers tailored deals to its users. This way, it is directly helping save money and enjoy reliable services. Moreover, users get a unified view of all their expenses, since the API automatically retrieves and categorises bank accounts’ information, making all expenses transparent and easy to scroll through.

„In order to help people understand which provider is best for them and if it is worth switching from the current one to another, we needed a comprehensive view of their expenses. Salt Edge Account Information has enabled our users to automatically connect their bank accounts and have the data extracted and analysed. We’ve already helped people using Switcho save over EUR 5 million and will keep on increasing their savings with the open banking possibilities.” – Marco Tricarico, CEO and co-founder of Switcho.

___________

Founded in 2019, Switcho is a FinTech startup helping people manage expenses and save money. In fact, Switcho is the only platform that offers “switching” options for energy, internet, and mobile phones, based on a personalized analysis of the starting situation and taking on the burden of the required paperwork if a switch is required. Funded for about €3M, Switcho has already offered its services to more than 50.000 users, collecting more than €5M in saving options and aims to become a 360-degree personal finance tool.