OpenFin, a fintech that offers an operating system for financial applications, has raised $17 million in Series C funding from banks and fintech investors including Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays, Bain Capital Ventures and Pivot Investment Partners. This brings its total venture funding to $40 million.
OpenFin is used by 15 of the 20 largest banks in the world, including RBC and BNY Mellon. It’s deployed on more than 200,000 desktops.
All told, 22 banks are building their own applications on OpenFin, according to CEO Mazy Dar. More than a thousand applications run on OpenFin and they’re used by 1,500 banks and buy-side firms.
“We have been following OpenFin’s progress and are impressed by the company’s success in gaining wide adoption in capital markets,” said Basil Darwish, managing director, strategic Investments at Wells Fargo Securities. “OpenFin is leading a key effort in providing the financial industry with a modern and unifying foundation for development and secure distribution of financial applications. We are delighted to lead OpenFin’s Series C funding round and excited to support the next phase of their development.”
OpenFin provides technology that Dar describes as similar to Apple's App Store for financial applications. Applications written for OpenFin’s operating system all work together and can share data with one another.
For banks that want to choose best of breed, innovative applications, “the theme in the market now is, we have to stop building stuff in-house that we're not going to be the best at, and integrate with folks that are the experts and can deliver it in a more nimble way,” Dar said. “In order for banks to make use of innovation, they have to integrate it into their workflow. If they can’t get end users — traders, salespeople, operations — to use this stuff, it simply doesn’t matter."
Banks want instant deployment to the end user, irrespective of what their security protocols are, which operating systems or browsers they’re using, he said.
Other companies, including Bloomberg and Refinitiv, also want to be the backdrop on which banks and vendors write all their applications. OpenFin has an advantage in that the operating system software is all it sells. It is also not locking users in. But they don’t have the standing of a completely independent third party.
Matt Harris, partner at Bain Capital Ventures, gave the company his endorsement.
"OpenFin is building the roads, bridges and communications infrastructure for financial apps that will allow capital markets to innovate like Silicon Valley,” he said. “We are proud to have been early backers of the company and we welcome the strategic support from Barclays, JPMorgan and Wells Fargo."
