Introducing Bank App: A Modern Command Center for the Future of Personal Banking

Argyle, Stytch, and Unit present a fresh, turnkey solution for finance management—powered entirely by income data.

Even the most innovative fintechs and neobanks still base their consumer experiences on traditional banking data provided by third parties like Plaid—a lagging indicator of the money consumers have, rather than a dynamic view of the money they’re making.

If finance solutions are tethered to opaque banking data, how can they offer unique experiences, sticky products, and credit services they’re confident customers can and will repay?

Today's workers—from the Starbucks barista to the FedEx driver to the Amazon warehouse clerk—earn incrementally: by the shift, the task, or the hour. Further, paychecks are typically issued twice a month, with wages hitting bank accounts days later. 

What if there was a way to offer financial services based on real-time earnings rather than historical liquidity?

Enter Bank App

Bank App is an application template built for the modern worker. Pioneered by the most forward thinking companies in fintech and authentication, this reference architecture demonstrates how Argyle data can be used in your own app and open sources the code to save resources in implementation.

Bank App uses Argyle’s user-permissioned income data, Unit’s powerful core banking, and Stytch’s passwordless authentication platform to enhance the way people manage their money.

A powerful control center for personal finance

Here’s a glimpse at what personal banking could look like with Bank App.

Streamlined account opening

Employers already have the KYC data users need to open a personal banking account, and it’s overkill to ask them to enter it again. With Bank App, users connect their income data via an employer or payroll provider, so KYC details are filled automatically. 

This lowers both friction and fraud—and boosts conversion rates. For one thing, research shows gig workers are over 10% likelier to link their employment records than their bank account.

KYC auto-population is powered by:

• Argyle’s profile and employment endpoints

• Stytch’s OTP service

Income transparency

Unlike standard banking apps that just display spending trends, Bank App starts with historical and projected income patterns based on data imported from Argyle. Workers in the US are making money from 2.5 jobs on average, and Bank App puts this effort front and center.

Bank App’s income data is powered by:

• Argyle’s payouts and activities endpoints

Embedded earned wage access

Live, shift-level transparency into hourly earnings enables a new set of low-cost pay advances. Bank App analyzes historical income trends and extends funds based on work that’s been completed but not yet paid out.

For example, if a user has worked $500 worth of shifts this week, but payday isn’t until next Friday, Bank App allows you to extend these funds in advance, with Argyle’s income data helping you feel confident they’ll be repaid.

Bank App’s EWA features are powered by:

• Argyle’s activities endpoints

• Argyle’s pay allocations monitoring webhooks

• Units book payments endpoint.

Linked checking and savings accounts

During the account opening process, Bank App updates ACH payout settings, so all earnings flow into Bank App instead of legacy banking services. In turn, users see all their expenses and income in a single account view.

Gone are the days of manually entering new routing and account numbers into employment portals or talking with HR to update payout preferences.

Bank App’s banking services powered by:

• Unit deposit accounts endpoint

• Argyles pay allocations update endpoint

Debit cards for seamless spending

In conjunction with earned wage access and banking functionality, users are issued physical and virtual Now debit cards. This affords them instant access to their funds for use both online and off.

Bank App's card services are powered by:

• Unit card management endpoints

New financial possibilities

Job discovery, credit facilities, peer-to-peer payments, and virtual cards are all baked in as features. Because Bank App uses a modern banking core in addition to Argyle’s income data, it’s able to provide a new set of financial possibilities that were previously hard to access.

Transforming the future of personal banking

By pivoting from banking data to real-time income records, Bank App opens new possibilities for consumer finance that are freed from the constraints of traditional data models—and the legacy banks that control them.

Your customers work hard. It’s time to extend them the credit they deserve and to empower them with data sources and finance tools that bring their assets forward—instead of holding them back. 

Learn more

A demo of Bank App is publicly available, so check out the user experience before you download the code and start building better, stronger financial solutions—completely for free.