According to an official blogpost, technological innovation has become a key growth area in Portugal. Lisbon in particular has evolved into a startup hub over the last seven years with huge support from the government and various private sector initiatives such as Startup Portugal, Startup Lisbon, and EIC Pilot. The country has become a hotspot for investors and entrepreneurs, with a repertoire of companies like Unbabel, Outsystems, Talkdesk, Farfetch, and Sensei calling it home. Portugal has seen steady growth in innovative tech platforms, attracting both European and global attention since Farfetch, the online luxury fashion retailer, became Portugal's first unicorn in 2015.
According to Yapily, Lisbon is on a mission to become Europe’s Silicon Valley Portugal and has reportedly long been underestimated when it comes to Open Banking connections. While it’s always been a destination for travellers, over the past few years, Lisbon has caught the eye of tech entrepreneurs and professionals alike. A growing tech environment and bustling city life have resulted in Lisbon quickly being considered Europe’s Silicon Valley, the blogpost continues.
The Portuguese government and the City of Lisbon in particular place a huge emphasis on providing resources for developing the country’s enterprise landscape. Recognising the impact that the startup environment has had in reviving and accelerating economic growth after the 2008 crash has led to several initiatives. There are several great initiatives like Invest Lisboa, a partnership between Lisbon’s City Council and the Portuguese Chamber of Commerce, aiming to attract investment, companies, and talent to the city, says Yapily’s announcement.
Yapily reportedly improves the integration process. The company’s platform seeks to simplify, unify, and adapt the responses of each bank through less complicated and more complete APIs. The banks in Portugal have broadly adopted the Berlin Group family of API standards. There are a few specific differences and customisations which have resulted in unique integration challenges, for example, some banks require custom API request headers and provide account IDs that are tied to customer consent, rather than immutable at the user level, Yapily says.
By integrating with Yapily, companies can bypass the high cost of integrating with each of the banks directly and get access to thousands of banks via a single integration point. Yapily’s coverage provides access to the 25 largest institutions in Portugal, including CGD, Millennium BCP, Banco Santander, and NovoBanco. This wide coverage means that over 95% of consumer and business accounts are accessible through Yapily’s API. The company’s customers reportedly gain reliable access to both retail and business accounts across the region, allowing them to access financial data and initiate direct account-to-account payments.
Following its expansion into Poland and Portugal, the company is continuing its mission to transform the financial landscape in Europe. Yapily is now live in 19 countries.
Yapily’s Pan-European coverage will support Polish fintechs who are looking to expand their solutions into wider Europe and beyond, announced the company in June 2022.
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