At Synctera, we’re continually enhancing our products and platform so that we continue to be the best choice for innovators creating bank-supported financial products. Today, FinTechs can make whatever use case they envision a reality with our expanding toolkit. 

Over the past few months, our product team has been hard at work building innovative new debit card, ACH, KYC, account verification, and platform features that make it even faster and easier to build a financial product than ever before. We also released wire transfers and transfers with cards in alpha. 

Updates to Synctera Debit Card

• Digital wallets and tokenization - FinTechs can now offer customers the ability to add Synctera debit cards to their digital wallets, such as Apple Pay or Google Wallet, so that they can conveniently store and use their payment cards securely. For more information, see the API guide. 
• More transaction details - We added transaction details (network reference ID, currency conversion data, fees) in our ‘Transactions’ endpoints and related webhooks to provide FinTechs with more references and a better breakdown of transaction amounts. The new fields are available under the user_data object of Transactions.
• Endpoint to list card products - We added a new List Card Products endpoint to allow FinTechs to list the card products they offer their customers. FinTechs can, for example, use this to present the different card products available to their customers within their app, and to explain the features of the card products offered.
• Card activation - We added an additional way of activating a card, via the ‘Update Card’ endpoint. This enables FinTechs to activate a physical card immediately after issuance.

Updates to Synctera ACH

• Partial holds - FinTechs that want to use Synctera ACH for account funding can now create partial holds for a percentage of the ACH transaction. A percentage of the total transaction amount is released in real time so customers can use the partially released amount immediately. This feature helps drive customer activation and engagement.
• Transaction descriptions for transfers to external accounts - FinTechs can add a transaction description for ACH transfers that go to external accounts. This allows the FinTech’s customer to easily understand why the ACH transfer occurred. It’s particularly useful for transfers that happen automatically (e.g. for a FinTech that automatically rounds up transactions and then moves the rounded up amount to savings).

New Synctera Know Your Customer (KYC) optional features

• Automatic enrollment in Watchlist Monitoring - If enabled, this feature will automatically enroll the FinTech’s customers in watchlist monitoring after the customers have passed initial KYC via Synctera Know Your Customer (KYC). Watchlist Monitoring runs constant checks to determine if the customer has been added to any watchlists. If it’s triggered, a case will be added in Synctera Cases for review.
• Automatic KYC rerun after customer information changes - If enabled, this feature will automatically recheck a customer’s KYC when they change their name, social security number, date of birth, or address. This shouldn’t happen often, but when it does, it ensures that FinTechs still know their customer and meet KYC requirements.

‍

Additional external account verification provider

We now support Finicity as a provider option for Synctera External Account Verification. FinTechs can use Finicity (via Synctera) to verify account ownership, identity and account balance for new accounts, and to get transaction information for external accounts. This allows a FinTech to validate the external accounts of a user, allowing that user to connect their external account and fund their new account.

New platform features

• Scheduled payments - FinTechs can now utilize Synctera to manage scheduled payments on their behalf. Customers may want to automatically move money into savings or to automatically send money for a mortgage payment, for example. FinTechs can define the expected schedule via API. If necessary, Synctera will recalculate based on business days and automatically initiate the payment. 
• Linking external accounts to businesses - External accounts can now be tied to businesses, so FinTechs can easily filter by all external accounts tied to a business.
• Statement generation - The Statements API allows FinTechs to retrieve the transactional information and disclosures needed to generate printable account statements for their customers. 
• Support for Plaid OAuth flows on Android - Our External Accounts API now fully supports the OAuth flows that Plaid and their financial institutions use. With the new ‘sdk_type’ field, FinTechs can specify which platform users are coming from, and Synctera puts them through the correct OAuth flow in Plaid. Please note that this requires a code change for supporting OAuth flows on Android going forward. 

Updated developer workspace

When developers and other technical users visit the Workspace tab in the Synctera Console, it is now even easier for them to explore our platform and:

1. Quickly generate API keys and access our new Postman workspace, where they can start stringing together our APIs and understanding what they can build with Synctera. FinTechs can fork our API collection in Postman and tweak it to mimic their API requests.
2. Explore the various ways Synctera can help them build and launch a financial product - they can request access to code for our fully functional, white labeled banking app, and they can get in touch with specific experts on our team.
3. Get a feel for our “Production Lite” environment, where they can test their MVP with real money and a real bank.

Other updates for Developers

• Data wipe in Sandbox - We want to enable developers to build reliable, well-tested apps. Building end-to-end tests and mocking vendors can be time intensive. We now support wiping data in Sandbox so developers can get a consistent test environment and run end-to-end tests in Sandbox.‍
• Documentation - We released the “Creating A Business Customer” developer guide. FinTechs can also now test requests directly from the API reference page.
  

Getting ready for Synctera Transfer with Card 

In the U.S., account funding is usually processed via ACH and can take up to three business days. Synctera Transfer with Card will provide a solution that allows a FinTech’s customers to move money from their debit cards to their checking or savings accounts in real time. This can be done to fund new accounts or to add money to established accounts. Customers can use the funds immediately after the real-time transfer. Synctera Transfer with Card will also enable real-time transfers to any external card; these "push to card" funds can be used by the receiver in real time, allowing the FinTech’s customers to push money to any card in real time.

We released the preview for the External Card Transfer API spec. This will allow FinTechs to prepare for their implementation of Synctera Transfer with Card and provide feedback on the API.

Getting ready for Synctera Wire

Synctera Wire will allow FinTech customers to send and receive domestic wires and create FedWire-formatted files. We released the alpha API and are testing it with a small group of FinTechs.