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Fiken struggled to connect to Norway’s banking system. We simplified this by offering a unified Banking API, connecting Fiken with over 250 Nordic banks in no time.
Aritma has a product that demonstrably works, is stable and lets you get up and running quickly!
Fiken provides an accounting program tailored for small businesses, offering solutions for invoicing and payroll. Fiken has experienced significant growth in recent years and represents one of Norway’s biggest fintech successes thanks to their uncompromising focus on user experience.
Fiken needed Norwegian bank integrations, but lacked internal resources.
Aritma Open Finance Platform provided Fiken with a single point of contact for every corporate bank in the Nordic countries.
Aritma boosted Fiken with a quick setup and a strong, responsive partnership.
Fiken was struggling to provide coverage of Norway’s corporate banking market and with increasing complexity around banking integrations – they needed a partner with the necessary expertise. Fiken’s CEO Bendik Gill Bakken and in-house developer Rune Peter Bjørnstad explains their banking integration issues and how Aritma was able to help them out.
In a short amount of time, Fiken’s rapid growth led to over 60.000 businesses using its software. Fiken also aimed to let users handle all their financial tasks within their accounting system - from billing to payroll. But to ensure a seamless process, Fiken had to provide a connection between the accounting system and the banks that their users demanded.
However, this also meant that the diversity of different banks increased. Customers wanted to keep their corporate bank when they started using Fiken's accounting system. In other words, as Fiken expanded, they faced a shortage of integrations with local banks used by new customers.
In Norway alone, there is a whole ecosystem of business banks, and integrating with each one of them was very time-consuming for Fiken. Developer Rune Peter Bjørnstad, explains that the challenge of connecting to corporate banks was consuming too much time and resources in-house.
– In the beginning, we were only connected to DNB and Sparebanken Vest. However, as we grew, we gained many new clients using various local banks across Norway, which significantly increased our workload. Adding more banking integrations seemed unattainable at that time, says Bjørnstad.
Thanks to Aritma Open Finance Platform, Fiken now only had to manage a single point of contact, which took on all responsibility for the banking integrations. Overnight, they went from a few integrations to full access to over 250 banks across the Nordic countries.
Founder and CEO of Fiken, Bendik Gill Bakken, believes the company has benefitted in numerous ways from its embedded partnership with Aritma:
– The biggest advantage has been allowing us to focus on what we do best. Aritma acts as a single point of contact between us and the complex banking landscape, a complexity we no longer have to manage.
Aritma also handles support and follow-up with the banks, allowing Fiken’s resources to focus on other areas. Bjørnstad has noted that this positively impacts their users.
– Beyond the technical benefits, the biggest advantage for us is that Arimta maintains open communication channels with the banks. This means customer issues are now resolved far more quickly than before. That’s a significant benefit for our customers, states the CEO of Fiken.
Connecting banking to an accounting system can be highly advantageous, especially for businesses that process many transactions each month. Fiken uses banking integrations to retrieve data from the banks, such as account balances and transaction details. These transactions can then be reconciled against the company’s accounts in Fiken to ensure accuracy.
One significant benefit of banking integrations is the ability to facilitate pre-approved payments. Currently, most Fiken users have to log in to their online banking platform to manually authorize payments. With Aritma’s solution, they can make payments directly from Fiken. By dealing with only one system, users save a lot of time in the long run.
– It’s been really straightforward getting started with Aritma’s solution, and I think we’re both equally pragmatic. After all, data is valuable to us, which means it’s important to have Aritma on board given their close relationship with the banks and ability to exercise influence. It’s been a real pleasure, Bjørnstad says.
Banking integrations have been available for decades, primarily in the form of files exchanged between banks and accounting systems. These file-based integrations often cause delays, with minutes or even hours lost in the process. However, the Banking API in the Open Finance Platform uses only real-time APIs, ensuring immediate payments. Fiken can offer this integration to its users, and connecting them to the solution is quick and simple. The in-house developer explains:
– Aritma provides comprehensive technical documentation for the entire API, allowing us to set up a client and have them up and running in almost no time. The entire process takes less than a day! There's no infrastructure to set up, as it uses common and established standards for authentication, security, and API establishment. It’s been a tremendous help to us.
The Banking API also facilitates PSD2. A PSD2 integration allows businesses to access data including balances and transactions without having to pay for corporate banking. This is a complex and nascent market in which there is a lot of activity and where Aritma can offer robust support.
– In the long run, PSD2 is likely to replace corporate banking agreements. But as far as PSD2 goes, we’re reluctant to get in too deep as yet since the quality of the data supplied by the banks is too poor. Nevertheless, there are quite a lot of companies that can’t afford or don’t see the need for corporate banking facilities, and as the quality of the data increases so PSD2 begins to meet the needs of many of our customers, Bjørnstad explains.
When we finally ask the Fiken CEO to summarise the partnership with Aritma, he offers two succinct thoughts:
– Firstly, Aritma has a product that demonstrably works, is stable and lets you get up and running quickly. Secondly, we’ve come to know them as a very responsive partner in terms of our own wishes, suggestions and feedback, Bakken says.
Bjørnstad also mentions the importance of selecting the right embedded partners, noting that Fiken is picky about who they work with:
– In short, we could feel that Aritma was a good fit for our company. They quite simply seemed like a good bunch to work with. Very rarely do we select partners on the basis of technology alone – we usually look for suppliers that we think we can collaborate well with.
Want to become an Aritma Embedded Partner like Fiken? Let’s meet up and figure out how we can work together and create value for your customers.
Are you interested in what Aritma can do for you? Contact us to schedule a free demo!
Aritma AS is a licenced PSD2 provider through the Norwegian Financial Authority (Account Information Service Providers).