rewrite this title Capitalise Teams Up with Plaid – Finovate

Capitalise, a business finance platform based in the U.K., has forged a strategic partnership with data and open finance network Plaid.

The collaboration integrates Plaid’s open banking services with Capitalise’s Instant Offers to simplify and streamline small business funding.

Capitalise made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2016. Plaid has been a Finovate alum since 2014.

U.K.-based business finance platform Capitalise has announced a strategic collaboration with fellow Finovate alum Plaid. The partnership is designed to simplify business funding, leveraging Open Banking to offer pre-approvals to 150,000 small businesses. Capitalise will integrate Plaid’s Open Banking services into its Instant Offers solution to enable businesses to secure pre-approvals from multiple lenders. Businesses will be able to accept offers and receive funding in minutes rather than days or weeks.

The partnership enhances Capitalise’s lending origination service by removing friction from the funding process. It will also help boost conversions thanks to faster decision-making that relies on accurate, real-time data. The collaboration comes at a time when a growing number of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the U.K. are embracing open banking technology. Plaid reported that adoption of open banking by U.K.-based SMEs has increased by 18% year-over-year.

“Open Banking sits at the core of SME credit decisioning and brings confidence to underwriting risk assessments,” Capitalise Co-Founder Ollie Maitland said. “These advances, in tandem with the huge growth in private credit markets, can bring down the high cost of non-bank lending. This is good news for U.K. small businesses.”

Open banking brings faster application processes, access to real-time financial data to accelerate approvals, and the ability to offer personalized rates, which can lower costs for borrowers. Challenger banks and alternative lenders have become huge players in the market for SME lending, representing more than 60% of new SME lending in the U.K. This has led to more options for small businesses looking for funding, and more competition between those looking to fund them.

“Pre-approvals have been the perfect use-case for Open Banking as a win for business owners browsing and great pre-qualification for lenders looking to lend,” Maitland said. “Plaid was a natural choice with their experience in SME lending plus their global presence.”

Founded in 2013 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, Plaid offers an international data and open finance network that helps make payments simpler and lending more accessible. With more than 100 million global users in more than 18 countries, Plaid’s technology helps institutions take advantage of open banking and open finance connectivity to grow revenues and fight fraud. Plaid has partnered with more than 12,000 companies — including members of the Fortune 500 — to help them provide their customers with greater choice and control over their financial lives.

Capitalise made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2016. At the conference, Maitland and co-founder Paul Surtees demonstrated how the company’s platform uses behavioral data to match and rank lenders and algorithms to compare more than 2,500 data points to find the most appropriate funding solutions for businesses. Today, the firm’s lending marketplace features 100 lenders, including 10 integrated Open Finance lenders on its Instant Offers framework.

Interested in demoing at FinovateEurope 2025 in London? Applications are still being accepted from innovative companies with new solutions that are ready to show. Visit our FinovateEurope hub today to learn more.

Photo by Jaanus Jagomägi on Unsplash

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