Synctera is creating a marketplace model for its banking as a service platform
- New BaaS firm Synctera is differentiating itself from competitors by giving fintechs options from more than one bank.
- Still, platform risk could slow the company’s progress.
BaaS firm Synctera launched in December.
The company’s vision is for fintechs to be able to use the platform to launch financial products like ledger and ACH. While some older BaaS platforms are wedded to a single partner bank, Synctera wants to offer fintechs options to work with different banks and products on its plaform.
Peter Hazlehurst is the CEO and co-founder of Synctera. Prior to starting the company, he was head of Uber Money. It’s this experience that informs the company’s vision for the power of embedded finance.
Hazlehurst compares Synctera to a transparent taxi ride.
“[A fintech is] a rider on Uber who actually wants to meet the driver before it takes a ride with them. And obviously that doesn’t really work,” said Hazlehurst. “With us, the fintech basically says, ‘Hey, I’m a rider, I want to go for a trip.’ And we have a bunch of banks on the backend that say, ‘Yeah, I’ll give you a ride’. And that way we help the infrastructure and the ecosystem be much more efficient.”
For now, the company is still in its early stages. It’s onboarded two community banks, including Coastal Community Bank and Lineage. Coastal has a history of providing banking capabilities to fintechs, including family banking solution Till and environmentally focused challenger bank Aspiration. Lineage is new but its goal is to bank fintechs.
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