Multibank: say no to feudalism

Article written in 2019

Sometimes I ask my friends where they would open an account if they had a company. Nine out of ten answer that in Sberbank (the biggest bank in Russia). When asked “why”, they say that this is Sberbank: not far from home and, most importantly, this is a state bank. This is understandable, the issue of trust is important. In Russia, they trust the state and advertising on TV. Trust makes entrepreneurs use a usb-flash, struggle to understand the bank interface and pay for bookkeeping.

We thought, what if companies could use our products without having to open an account? So we decided that we need to integrate with other banks.

We planned to integrate through the API (application programming interface) — this is a service in another bank through which you can exchange information directly. Modulbank has an open API, which means that any client can use it. To do this, you do not need to write to the chat, fill out applications for access — come and use it. In other banks, this is not the case: they have an API, but it is closed — you won’t be able to connect it yourself.

We started looking for other options. Because all banks are integrated with 1C (accounting software, monopoly in Russia), we decided to try this integration method. There are two ways to exchange between the bank and 1C: automatic (1C: Directbank) and through files (1C: Client-Bank). You connect to another bank and say “hello, I’m 1C, give me the statement.” We did just that, and in April we rolled out the first version of Multibank. We were able to connect with automatic exchange to Tinkoff, Tochka and VTB, and to all other banks by manually uploading files in the 1C: Client-Bank format.

But manually, through a file, you can upload a statement once, you can do it twice, but no one will do this all the time, and 3 banks with automatic exchange are only a small part of the market. We continued to search for other ways to connect and found the opportunity to connect 8 more banks in the automatic exchange mode: Sberbank, Alfa-Bank, UBRiR, Avangard, Promsvyazbank, Raiffeisen, Otkritie and Sfera.

For the client, the connection of the bank takes place in 3 steps:

1. Click in your personal account “Connect another bank”.
2. Enter your username/password from another bank.
3. Confirm connection via SMS code.

Further, ruble, currency, card and deposit accounts, the balance and statement on them are loaded from another bank.

The client in the personal account of Modulbank has the opportunity to:

• see the accounts of other banks, their balance and operations in one window;
• conduct an analysis of the risks of the company’s reliability for the White Business service. I talked about the White Business service here;
• keep track of the tax burden. This helps the company to face the financial monitoring of Modulbank less often;
• automatically upload the details of counterparties. This is convenient if you are moving from another bank: you connected another bank, and the entire history with the counterparty was automatically pulled up.

For customers, the service Multibank is free.

Our plans:

• signing payments in one interface;
• using Modulbank products without opening an account;
• increase in the credit limit when connecting another bank;
• robotic advice on financial accounting.