Griffin has been a name in the British fintech and embedded finance market for some time, but until last week, their product and services were only available for a very limited number of companies: companies that were part of Griffin’s Foundation programme. The programme was designed to test and learn with friendly clients before opening up to the general public.
But now Griffin is available to everybody (Griffin), and this will change the British infrastructure provider landscape (how much is to be seen). The UK is a fascinating market for banking-as-a-service. Due to Brexit, companies need to have a local licence and cannot ‘passport’ a licence from an EU country. Thus, a company that wants to operate in the EU and the UK needs two licences: one for all of the EU and one for the UK.
After Brexit, some wondered if this would affect the UK’s position in the fintech world as the effort required to play in the market grew significantly. But neither international nor local infrastructure providers have shown any sign of disinterest. In fact, more companies are starting. Griffin is just one example.
Griffin’s core products are banking infrastructure services, from bank accounts and payments to safeguarding of customer funds for other regulated providers. Their launch announcement contains two customers from the financial services and insurance industries. Griffin will be able to cater to a broad spectrum of customers, but their website lists specifically proptech and wealth management as focus verticals. It will be interesting to see what other announcements the company will make in the next few months and how they will compete (at least partially) with some of the other big names in the UK’s fintech infrastructure space like Modulr, Weavr, and ClearBank.
