Lightyear partners with Truelayer for open banking payments

Lightyear has launched open banking payments through a partnership with Truelayer to deliver instant account funding.

The neobroker, founded by ex-Wise duo Martin Sokk and Mihkel Aamer, launched in September 2021. At the same time, it raised $8.5m and started onboarding customers to its app from a 5,000 strong waiting list. 

Its offering combines multi-currency accounts with unlimited access to over 1,500 global stocks and ETFs, with no trading fees, no account fees and no FX fees up to £3,000 per month.

Like rival Freetrade it has opted for open banking payments early in its life, to speed up the route to fund customer accounts via bank to bank payments.

Users connect their primary bank account to the trading app for instant and secure funding using Payments Initiation and allowing funding in “seconds”.

Martin Sokk, CEO and Co-Founder of Lightyear: “Our goal is to make investing easy and approachable for everyone in Europe. A big part of that means removing all the traditional pain points that create a clunky customer journey. 

Instant payments improve the customer experience two-fold, he adds.