London financial platform becomes first SME player to open platform to non-account holders

London based business financial platform Tide announced it will allow SMEs to connect their existing business accounts, held at other institutions, to its platform using open banking.

Tide already serves over 375k SMEs nationally, making up seven per cent of the market.

This latest development will allow small businesses to save time and money on their financial admin, by using the full range of finance and admin products available on the Tide platform, without opening a Tide business account.

Oliver Prill, Tide CEO said: “Tide has been enormously successful in attracting new businesses, by helping them start out - helping business owners to register their businesses and open a current account quickly and easily.

“We will continue to serve new businesses, with the Tide current account and an ever expanding set of starting out services.”

“However, with established businesses generally not switching banking providers or having multiple banking providers, we reached the conclusion that the only material way competition can be introduced for the established businesses is to allow them to virtually switch to use the Tide platform without actually switching bank accounts.”

Kevin Hollinrake MP, co-chair, All Party Parliamentary Group on Fair Business Banking, added: “Giving businesses access to a wider range of time-saving, productivity-enhancing services without the hassle of changing banks is very big news and a ground-breaking innovation for business banking.

“More competition means more choice, better service and lower fees for businesses and we very much welcome this revolutionary approach.”