• First Fidelity Bank has entered the highly competitive Banking as a Service market with Episode Six as its platform partner.
• The BaaS solution is built for the next generation of embedded financial services players.

Today, First Fidelity Bank (FFB) a 100-year-old community bank headquartered in Oklahoma City, announced the launch of its next-gen Banking as a Service (BaaS) solution. The solution was developed with Episode Six (E6), a leading global payments and banking infrastructure provider that provides a simple, flexible platform that meets a critical need for any company looking to offer next-generation payments.

FFB and E6’s BaaS solution is now live with its first customer, Unifimoney, a multi-asset digital wealth management platform that enables community banks and credit unions to offer investment services to their customers through online banking.

As a market that proves to be in demand, there are an estimated 100 or so sponsor banks offering BaaS-type solutions and a large number of intermediary platforms that sit between the bank and the client companies. The market has struggled with undifferentiated offerings, poor payments infrastructure and often legacy and conflicting approaches to compliance, especially around blockchain and cryptocurrencies.

The FFB and E6 solution is designed to support the next generation of embedded finance with a low-cost, quick-to-deploy architecture; real-time payments including RTP and OCT; card issuing and processing; and modern, sophisticated digital KYC/AML/IDV and fraud detection, and controls including Astra Finance, Sardine and Prove. E6 has great experience in this market with more than three million user accounts live on its platform already.

“Open banking is as much if not more of an opportunity for community banks than a threat,” said John Symcox, Chief Innovation Officer, First Fidelity Bank. “It allows us to bring best-in-market solutions to clients and customers at high speed and low cost. The future of money is, we believe, going to be banking+ other services offered as a bundle. We want to be a part of enabling this and core to this ecosystem of new money services. To this end, we needed a trusted partner with extensive payments experience in this market, and we’ve found that with Episode Six.”

John Mitchell, CEO and Co-Founder of E6 said, “FFB has some of the most sophisticated payments infrastructure in the market and can enable compelling customer experiences with real time, secure money movement. Our platform provides the virtual ledger that has been tested at scale with some of the world’s leading financial institutions. We’ve heard first-hand that this combination creates an incredibly compelling platform for fintechs.”

“There are many BaaS solutions in the market now,” said Ben Soppitt, CEO of Unifimoney. “They promise the world, but actually launching can be painful, slow and expensive. FFB and E6 have solved this with a platform and process built for the future, not the past. And they’ve done it in a way that makes launching a BaaS solution much easier, allowing us to get to market quickly.”

For more information visit www.ffb.com, www.episodesix.com and www.unifimoney.com.

About Episode Six

Episode Six is a payments technology company that gives banks, fintechs and brands the freedom to design and bring leading digital payment propositions to market with unmatched speed. From issuer processing to digital wallets – across deposits, credit, savings, and loyalty rewards – and account management, we power clients’ payments journeys with the most flexible and adaptable platform on the market today, providing highly configurable products with user-driven tools and technology to stay ahead of, and respond to, customer demand and market shifts. Episode Six’s platform is purpose-built to transfer value of any kind – fiat currency, cryptocurrencies, brand value points, gold, and more. Episode Six operates globally across 25 countries with an expanding team located in the U.S., Europe, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Australia. Investors include HSBC, Mastercard, SBI Investment Co., Ltd. and Anthos Capital. For more information, visit www.EpisodeSix.com or LinkedIn.

About First Fidelity Bank

First Fidelity Bank, OK is a family owned institution dedicated to the success of our customers on their financial journey. Bringing together technology and relationships, First Fidelity Bank is a leader for banking innovation. For over 100 years First Fidelity Bank has been a stable and innovative bank, competing with the largest institutions while maintaining the identity of our community banking relationships.

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