Allica Bank has partnered with Yapily to roll out Open Banking-powered top-ups for UK SME current accounts.

Through its partnership with the Open Banking infrastructure platform, instead of manually authorising and transferring funds between apps and accounts, Allica's business owner customers can log into their current account, select the amount they want to top-up, and authorise the payment in a few clicks.

Companies can then keep this money for their day-to-day spending in their Allica current account, or transfer it into their instant-access Savings Pot.

Allica Bank, which launched to market five years ago, established its flagship Business Rewards Account in early 2023.

The partnership says that the Open Banking infrastructure provides securely initiated payments in real time, making sure that funds are transferred directly without the need for multiple logins or manual steps.

This feature is the first of Yapily's Open Banking services to be implemented at the challenger bank, with more set to follow in the next few months.

Allica says that the move comes as small businesses are disproportionately impacted by time-consuming and error-prone manual processes, adding that they are "significantly underserved by banks."

“Business owners are busy people," said Nida Sattar, product director for payments, Allica Bank. "It’s why, when it comes to their bank, our focus is on how we can make life easier for our customers, alongside the human support they get from their relationship manager."

She continued: "Being able to easily and quickly top up your account, rather than faffing around with manual payments, is one great example of this. And using Open Banking in this way provides important security benefits for our customers, too.”

Other financial services institutions that have rolled out Yapily's Open Banking structure in recent years include Adyen, Alipay, Intuit QuickBooks, Pleo, and Zilch.

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