Founded in 2014 by Ford, who was previously head of acquisitions for OnTrees, a personal finance app that exited to MoneySuperMarket, Pariti was billed as a mobile app that plugged into your existing bank accounts to help you keep an eye on your spending.
This included tracking how much you are paying out servicing existing debt, such as overdrafts or credit cards, and suggesting changes you could make to pay off that debt more quickly. In a bid to offer fairer rates of credit, Pariti also had integrations with lending fintechs Zopa and Lendable.
The challenger bank has a full banking license (meaning that it can do balance sheet lending), offers its own account aggregation app, and recently launched its first bespoke financial product in the form of a travel-friendly and generous cash-back credit card.
Although coming from two different regulatory angles — Pariti didn’t have a banking license and the two companies were on a similar mission, so the acquisition genuinely looks like a good fit.
It’s also fun to see the Pariti duo join forces with a bonafide challenger bank. The startup had partnered with HSBC to power the incumbent bank’s ‘SmartSave’ app, which helped customers to automatically save their spare change into their HSBC savings account. However, despite a reportedly successful trial of the app, the partnership with HSBC didn’t proceed any further.
Terms of the deal remain undisclosed.
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