What happened: British banking-as-a-service provider Modulr has acquired accounts payable provider Nook (TechFundingNews). Nook targets businesses and accountants, and to put it simply, it offers a badge transfer solution. Instead of authorizing outgoing transfers separately, the business owner or accountant connects their bookkeeping tool with Nook and can start and finish the payment run in seconds.
My comment: Currently, Nook partners with Currency Cloud for its e-money accounts. These accounts need to be funded by the businesses or accountants before the outgoing transfers can be made. With the acquisition, Currency Cloud will probably be replaced by the Modulr offering, and the solution will be made available to existing and new Modulr customers.
The e-money accounts (Modulr’s core offering) are the basis for such an offering, but often they don’t solve problems by themselves. What is often required is another layer of features and functionality tailored to specific customer segments. From my point of view, the acquisition makes a lot of sense for Modulr, and it’s another move away from the pure banking-as-a-service offering to a complete business flow solution.
