12 Best Banking as a Service Platforms, Software & Solutions

Banking-as-a-service platforms are APIs that let you build financial products without becoming a bank.

The banking industry is facing a paradox.

For centuries, it’s been nearly impossible to create a new bank. The regulations are intense, the capital requirements enormous, and the technical challenges daunting.

Yet we’re in the middle of a banking renaissance.

Every day, new fintech products launch that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. Behind most of them is a banking-as-a-service platform.

I’ve spent the last few weeks evaluating these platforms. What I discovered surprised me.

What follows is my analysis of the 12 best banking-as-a-service platforms available today. I’ve ranked them not by some arbitrary “goodness” score, but by how well they solve specific problems for specific businesses.

If you’re building a fintech startup, modernizing a legacy bank, or adding financial features to your SaaS product, at least one of these platforms will be your foundation.

The Best BaaS Platforms At A Glance

1. Backbase

Backbase is an engagement banking platform that helps banks break free from their legacy systems without having to tear everything down and start over.

I feel most banks today are trapped. Not by their competitors or regulations, but by their own technology.

I’ve seen this pattern before in other industries.

Companies build their systems piece by piece over decades, and suddenly they find themselves with a digital version of Winchester Mystery House—doors that lead nowhere, stairways to sealed rooms.

What makes Backbase different is that they don’t ask you to demolish your house and build a new one. Instead, they let you renovate one room at a time.

You keep your core systems running while progressively modernizing the parts that matter most to your customers.

It comes with over 400 pre-built banking capabilities.

Want to create a unique onboarding flow for premium customers? You can do that.

Need to integrate with a fintech partner? That’s possible too.

The real power move here is their dual approach to building banking features. You can use their out-of-the-box solutions to quickly launch standard banking features—they cover about 80% of what most banks need.

Then, you can focus your developers’ energy on building the 20% that makes your bank different from everyone else’s.

They’ve also elegantly solved the deployment puzzle. You can run it on the cloud, on-premise, or both. It’s your bank, your rules.

This might seem like a small detail, but it’s crucial. Many banks can’t go all-in on the cloud because of regulations or legacy systems. Backbase doesn’t force them to.

Backbase Features

• Identity & Entitlements manages user access and security across all banking channels
• Customer Experience Platform runs AI-powered personalized banking campaigns
• Omnichannel Banking Core enables real-time operations through microservices
• Digital Banking Apps power mobile and web banking applications
• Digital Lending automates loan origination processes
• Digital Investing combines trading, robo-advisory, and portfolio management
• Human Assist Tools unify customer support workflows
• Integration Framework connects with core banking and fintech services

2. ClearBank

ClearBank is a banking-as-a-service platform that lets you build a bank without becoming one.

When you build on ClearBank, you’re not just getting technology—you’re getting a banking license.

I’ve seen countless fintech startups burn millions trying to get their own banking licenses.

The way ClearBank handles this is clever. They give you a full banking stack through their API, but they don’t compete with you.

Your customers are yours. Period.

In an industry where everyone’s trying to eat everyone else’s lunch, this is different.

Their API isn’t just a wrapper around old banking tech. It’s cloud-native, which means it scales with you. Most banking APIs break when you grow too fast. ClearBank’s doesn’t.

But here’s what caught my attention: their multi-currency accounts.

ClearBank has built international payments into its core. Each customer gets their own IBAN, and they can hold multiple currencies under it.

They’ve also solved the trust problem. All GBP funds are held at the Bank of England, and they offer FSCS protection up to £85,000.

It’s a business accelerator. Your customers trust you more when their money is protected.

ClearBank connects to all major UK payment schemes—Faster Payments, Bacs, CHAPS, plus SEPA for Europe.

One thing that might not be obvious at first is their simulation environment. You can test everything before going live. In banking, where a single bug can cost millions, this is crucial.

ClearBank Features

• Banking Infrastructure runs regulated banking services through a single API
• Real-Time Clearing connects to major UK and European payment schemes
• Virtual IBANs enable instant account creation at scale
• Multi-currency accounts handle multiple currencies under one IBAN
• Embedded Banking delivers FSCS-protected accounts
• Cloud-Native API provides zero-downtime operations
• The simulation environment allows pre-production testing

3. Finacle

Finacle is a cloud-native banking platform that lets established banks modernize their entire operations—from core systems to customer engagement—through a modular suite of solutions.

What I find fascinating about Finacle is that they’ve taken a different approach from both Backbase and ClearBank.

I’ve spent time studying their architecture, and it’s clear they’re playing a different game.

Most banking platforms try to be either cloud-first or on-premise. Finacle is cloud-neutral. This might seem like a small technical detail, but it’s a profound strategic choice.

Think about the dilemma big banks face. They want cloud scalability, but regulations often force them to keep certain operations on-premise.

Finacle lets them do both.

Their AI capabilities are particularly interesting. Instead of bolting on some machine learning models, they’ve built what they call a “Data and AI Suite.”

You can train models on synthetic data (solving the privacy problem that plagues most banking AI initiatives), and then deploy them across any channel.

The most compelling evidence of their approach working is their presence in over 100 countries.

But there’s a trade-off:

Finacle isn’t for everyone. If you’re a startup looking to launch a neobank quickly, ClearBank is probably a better choice.

If you need to modernize specific parts of your bank while keeping others unchanged, Backbase might be more suitable.

Finacle Features

• Digital Engagement Hub enables omnichannel banking across retail and corporate segments
• Cloud-Native Architecture supports hybrid deployments across public and private clouds
• AI Platform includes pre-built models and synthetic data generation capabilities
• Corporate Banking Suite handles everything from trade finance to treasury management
• Data Platform unifies all banking data for real-time analytics and insights
• Integration Framework connects with existing systems through open APIs

4. Finastra

Finastra is a banking platform that lets established banks deconstruct their entire operation into composable pieces they can upgrade one by one.

Instead of building yet another all-in-one platform, they’ve created what I’d call a “banking Lego set.”

You can take apart your existing operations and rebuild them piece by piece.

This matters because banks can’t just stop everything and rebuild from scratch. They have millions of customers who need to access their money today.

What makes Finastra different from Backbase or Finacle is its focus on embedded finance.

They’ve realized that the future of banking isn’t just about banks—it’s about embedding financial services everywhere.

Their SME lending service is a good example.

Finastra has built an entire marketplace around lending. They connect lenders with businesses right at the point where the money is needed.

The trade-off is complexity. You’ll need more technical expertise than you would with ClearBank. But you get more control.

Their approach to payments is particularly clever. Instead of building their own payment rails, they’ve created a layer that can work with any payment system.

This means banks can switch between different providers without rewriting their code.

One thing that surprised me: they’ve built specific solutions for Islamic banking. Most platforms ignore this market entirely.

Finastra Features

• End-to-end lending platform that handles everything from syndicated loans to mortgages
• Treasury and capital markets tools for risk management
• Islamic banking capabilities built-in
• Real-time payment processing that works with any payment rail
• Embedded finance tools to distribute banking services through other companies

5. Finxact

Finxact is a cloud-native core banking platform that lets you rebuild your bank’s entire technology stack piece by piece, without ever turning it off.

Instead of replacing your entire core at once, Finxact lets you rebuild it like a ship at sea. You replace one plank at a time while staying afloat.

They’ve solved three hard problems that have plagued banking modernization:

First, they made the core extensible. You can add new types of accounts, assets, or rules without begging your vendor.

Want to track ESG scores alongside balances?

Just add it to the data model.

Second, they made time travel possible. Their temporal data model lets you recreate any past state of an account.

This sounds like a technical detail until you need to explain to regulators exactly what happened three years ago.

Third, they built it to scale. It handles over 51,000 API calls per second. That’s not a marketing number—it’s what their largest clients need just to stay running.

Like Finastra, Finxact believes in composable banking, but they take it several steps further.

They’ve even built a domain-specific language in TypeScript for writing business rules. Your product team can create new banking products without waiting for developers.

Finxact Features

• Event-driven architecture that eliminates batch processing
• Multi-position accounts that can mix traditional and crypto assets
• Real-time transaction processing with no end-of-day reconciliation
• Complete API access to all customer and transaction data
• Cloud-native deployment on AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud
• TypeScript-based business rules engine
• Integration with the full Fiserv product suite

6. FIS’ Embedded Finance

FIS is a banking-as-a-service platform that helps banks and fintechs meet in the middle, reducing the friction that typically exists between them.

The thing that stands out to me about FIS is its radical approach to the economics of banking.

Most BaaS platforms I’ve seen, like Backbase or Finacle, focus primarily on technology. FIS focuses on something more fundamental: customer acquisition costs.

They’ve managed to cut the cost of acquiring a banking customer from $200 to $35. That’s not a typo.

This matters because customer acquisition is what kills most banking initiatives. I’ve seen banks spend millions on beautiful platforms only to struggle with getting customers.

The way FIS solves this is clever.

Instead of building yet another banking platform (we’ve seen enough of those), they’ve built a partnership engine.

Think about what happens when a fintech wants to offer banking services. Traditionally, they’d need to:

1. Find a bank willing to partner
2. Navigate complex regulations
3. Build their own tech stack
4. Figure out compliance
5. Market their services

FIS eliminates steps 2-4 entirely.

They’ve also cracked the revenue-sharing problem that plagues most bank-fintech partnerships.

You get access to interchange fees, transactional revenue, and even data monetization opportunities.

Their API approach is more focused than what you get with Finxact.

Instead of trying to do everything, they’ve built deep functionality around the things that make money: account opening, credit cards, and money movement.

FIS Features

• Banking partnership engine that matches banks with fintechs’
• Revenue sharing framework for interchange and transaction fees
• Core banking APIs focused on monetizable services
• Compliance infrastructure sharing
• Customer acquisition cost optimization tools
• Data analytics for customer spending patterns
• ACH and wire transfer capabilities
• Automated account opening and card issuance

7. NovoPayment

NovoPayment is a banking-as-a-service platform that lets you build and deploy financial services across the Americas without getting lost in the complexity of regional regulations.

NovoPayment focused on a specific region – Latin America – and built deep expertise there.

NovoPayment understands the unique challenges of banking in the Americas. They know how to handle cross-border payments between the US and Latin America, which is harder than it sounds.

What caught my attention was their partner network.

They’ve built connections with local payment networks, identity verification providers, and banking cores across Latin America. These aren’t partnerships you can build overnight.

The way they handle real-time payments is clever. Unlike FIS, which focuses mainly on reducing customer acquisition costs, NovoPayment focuses on reducing integration complexity.

Their approach to fraud prevention is worth noting. They’ve integrated with specialized providers like Nice Actimize and Experian.

This means you get best-in-class fraud prevention without the platform becoming bloated.

NovoPayment Features

• Full-stack banking infrastructure for the Americas
• Real-time payment capabilities with local network integrations
• Modular banking solutions that work across borders
• Pre-built connections with LatAm payment networks
• Identity verification tailored to local regulations
• Multi-country fraud prevention
• Digital wallet and card issuance capabilities

8. RazorpayX

RazorpayX (by Razorpay) is a banking-as-a-service platform that focuses on making every business payment smarter, whether it’s payroll, vendor payments, or API-based payouts.

RazorpayX has built something specifically for growing businesses that need to move money efficiently.

You will appreciate the way they handle payouts.

RazorpayX has built an AI-powered routing system that achieves a 99.9% success rate for payouts.

This matters because failed payments are expensive. Not just in terms of fees, but in terms of trust. When your vendor doesn’t get paid on time, they remember.

Moving on, RazorpayX’s Source to Pay system solves a problem I’ve seen kill many growing companies: messy vendor payments.

Most companies end up with a maze of spreadsheets, emails, and half-completed payments. RazorpayX turns this into a single workflow.

Their escrow management deserves special attention too. RazorpayX has built it into its core, which means you can open sub-escrows instantly.

What makes RazorpayX different from the other platforms we’ve looked at is their focus on automation. They’ve built what I’d call a “business payments autopilot.”

You can see this in how they handle payroll.

Instead of just moving money, they’ve automated tax filing across different states. If you’ve ever tried to handle multi-state payroll manually, you know how valuable this is.

RazorpayX Features

• A financial management suite that lets you make up to 50,000 payouts with a single OTP
• Multi-bank routing system with near-perfect success rates
• Automated vendor management from purchase orders to payments
• Handles everything from salary processing to compliance across 28 states
• Digital modules for instant sub-escrow creation
• Credit card program with industry-specific limits

9. Intergiro

Intergiro is a European banking-as-a-service platform that lets you embed complete financial services into your product through a single API.

Intergiro has a crystal clear focus on simplicity.

Intergiro has built what programmers call a “minimal viable banking platform.”

I’ve spent time studying their architecture, and it reminds me of the early Unix tools. Each piece does one thing well.

Their onboarding API, for instance, can verify 2,500 document types from 195 countries.

Their approach to cards is equally clever. Intergiro focuses on reducing implementation complexity.

You can issue virtual cards instantly and tokenize them for Apple Pay and Google Pay. If you’ve ever tried to do this with traditional banking APIs, you know how painful it can be.

Intergiro works best if you’re building in Europe.

While NovoPayment dominates Latin America and RazorpayX owns India, Intergiro has built deep integrations with European payment systems.

You should also know about their no-code app builder. Most banking platforms give you APIs and say “good luck.” Intergiro lets you build a complete banking app without writing code.

Intergiro Features

• Complete onboarding system with 2,500+ document types supported
• Virtual and physical card issuing with instant digital wallet integration
• European-focused payment rails and IBAN issuance
• No-code banking app builder with white-label capabilities
• Real-time data analytics platform built for product optimization
• Full compliance and regulatory coverage for Europe

10. Galileo

Galileo is a financial technology platform that turns APIs into bank accounts, cards, and payments.

The first thing that hits you about Galileo is their scale. They handle 168 million accounts. That’s more than most banks.

But scale alone isn’t interesting. What’s interesting is how they got there.

Unlike Backbase, which helps existing banks modernize, or ClearBank, which gives you a banking license, Galileo gives you primitives. Financial Lego blocks, if you will.

These primitives are their APIs. But they’re not just generic banking APIs. They’ve split them into four types that match how real financial products work:

• Program API for account data
• Events API for notifications
• Auth API for approvals
• Disputes API for when things go wrong

The way Galileo handles disputes is worth learning about. Instead of treating disputes as an afterthought, they’ve made it a first-class API.

If you’ve ever had to build a dispute system, you know this is gold.

Their focus on embedded finance is different from FIS’s approach. While FIS tries to reduce customer acquisition costs, Galileo tries to make finance disappear into your product.

What Galileo does best is let you build financial products that feel custom-made. Think payroll cards that integrate with HR software, or expense cards that know your company’s policies.

Their developer experience deserves a hat tip. They give you a sandbox environment that lets you simulate real transactions before going live.

Galileo Features

• Program API for managing customer accounts
• Events API for real-time notifications
• Auth API for transaction approvals
• Disputes API for handling chargebacks
• Sandbox environment for testing
• Card issuing with custom rules
• Real-time payment processing
• Multi-country support

11. Chime

Chime is a banking-as-a-service app that’s taken an unusual path: they’ve become their own biggest customer.

Chime built their platform and then used it to create one of America’s most successful neobanks.

This matters for two reasons:

First, they’ve proven their tech works at scale. When you’re processing millions of transactions daily, you can’t fake reliability.

Second, they’ve built what developers actually need, not what bankers think developers need.

The real innovation here isn’t in their feature set – everyone has accounts and cards. It’s in their architecture.

Instead of building a monolithic platform like Finacle, they’ve created small, focused services.

Want to add early paycheck access to your app? That’s one API call.

Need overdraft protection? Another API call.

But there’s a clear tradeoff here.

Their platform is optimized for consumer fintech. If you’re building complex corporate banking products like Finastra specializes in, Chime probably isn’t for you.

What’s fascinating is how they’ve approached risk.

Unlike ClearBank, which gives you a full banking license, Chime lets you piggyback on their relationships with banks like Stride Bank and Bancorp.

Chime Features

• Modular banking services with single API calls
• Real-time transaction processing optimized for consumer fintech
• Bank partnership access through their platform
• AI-powered fraud detection system
• Automated compliance handling for US markets
• Embedded finance toolkit for rapid product development
• White-label banking solutions with customizable UX
• Multi-bank integration for redundancy

12. Arc by Green Dot

Arc is a BaaS platform that combines Green Dot’s bank charter with embedded finance capabilities.

What makes Arc different from the other platforms we’ve looked at is its vertical integration.

Most BaaS providers are either tech companies partnering with banks (like Galileo) or banks trying to build tech platforms (like ClearBank).

Arc is both.

Their “single-source” approach is clever. Instead of cobbling together different vendors for KYC, card issuing, and account management, you get everything through one integration.

The scale they’ve achieved is substantial:

80 million accounts managed, $230 billion processed annually, and 14 million tax refund payments.

What I find most interesting about Arc is how they’ve solved the distribution problem. Arc helps non-financial companies become financial services providers.

Their 7,000 partners range from retail giants to tech companies.

Unlike RazorpayX, which excels at business payments, or Intergiro, which focuses on European markets, Arc is optimized for consumer financial services in the US.

Arc Features

• Banking infrastructure with built-in compliance and regulation handling
• Single API access to accounts, cards, and payment processing
• Tax refund disbursement capabilities (unique among the platforms we’ve covered)
• Physical cash deposit network with 90,000+ locations
• White-label mobile banking apps with 4.8-star ratings
• Enterprise-grade security with bank-level compliance

Final Thoughts

Banking used to be the ultimate fortress: granite buildings, steel vaults, and executives with salaries that would make God blush.

No more.

The greatest wealth transfer in financial history isn’t happening with inheritance taxes or investment strategies—it’s happening via API calls.

What’s extraordinary isn’t the technology—it’s the redistribution of power.

Banking is experiencing its Napster moment. The unbundling. The rearchitecting. The democratizing.

The value isn’t in the safe anymore; it’s in the software.

The winners won’t be institutions with marble lobbies and centuries of tradition.

They’ll be tech companies who understand that embedded finance follows Metcalfe’s Law—its value grows exponentially with each integration.

Life is better when financial services are delivered exactly when and where you need them. The revolution has an API key, and resistance isn’t just futile—it’s financially irresponsible.