Tembo

Seamless payments, stratospheric growth

Tembo, the multi-award-winning savings and mortgage platform, is on a mission to “make home happen” by bringing together savings products and mortgage services for first-time buyers, movers and re-mortgagers.

“The last 12 months have been pretty crazy, in a very good way,” said Polly Gilbert, CMO, Tembo. “Our assets under administration have grown by 250%, so we’re helping more people than ever on the path to home ownership.”

Tembo’s most popular savings product is a Lifetime ISA, a UK government-backed scheme giving savers a 25% bonus on their annual deposits, up to £4,000. Customers can quickly and easily top-up their Tembo Lifetime ISA and other savings accounts with recurring Direct Debits or one-off open banking payments, all via a slick in-app payment experience.

“We chose GoCardless because we wanted a seamless experience, whatever the payment type,” said Dave Campbell, Operations Lead, Tembo. “Direct Debits help customers to save regularly, over time. Or they can deposit whenever works for them using our instant top-ups feature, which is powered by GoCardless’ Instant Bank Pay.

Stratospheric adoption

Instant Bank Pay has had a particularly impressive impact for Tembo, helping customers to save their way, maximise the interest they earn and ensure they don’t miss out on the 25% government bonus.

“If regular saving doesn’t work for someone — perhaps their salary is commission based — Instant Bank Pay still makes saving easy for them,” said Polly. “Or maybe they’re more strategic, and want to deposit their full annual allowance the moment a new tax year starts in order to maximise their savings and the 25% government top up.”

Flexibility like this has seen customers flock to Tembo and adoption has been stratospheric.

Instant Bank Pay also allowed Tembo to keep the end-of-year deposit window open for an extra six hours compared to the competition. “We collected around £1,000,000 in those six hours alone,” added Polly. “That unlocked £250,000 in free money from the government that customers would otherwise have missed.”

This extra flexibility has also contributed in part to increased customer satisfaction among Tembo customers. “Over the last 12 months, our CSAT scores have soared from 84% to 98%,” Polly added.

Josh Kendrick is a Tembo customer. He said: “I've definitely done this in the past. You're coming towards the end of the tax year and you think, ‘I need to put this money in’. It’s great that Tembo lets me make deposits pretty much right up to the deadline.”

A rock-solid payments platform

Handling growth like that demands a robust and reliable payments platform.

“It was a massive jump, and we really counted on GoCardless to make that process smooth and painless,” said Dave. “A rock-solid platform that can ingest that many payments gives us the confidence to take on that kind of growth.”

The GoCardless API and the expertise of its engineering team made building and maintaining this platform an easy fit for Tembo.

“Integrating GoCardless and open banking into our app was straightforward because it’s got all the major banks lined up behind clear standards,” said Dave. “The API documentation is superb and the development quality stands out against the competition. We also get to speak to the developers behind the code so we always know we’re getting the best advice available.”

Unique and unexpected innovations

Tembo has used GoCardless’ open banking capabilities to unlock some unique – and unexpected – innovations and operational improvements.

Take its Gift Time feature, which allows friends and family to contribute to savers’ Lifetime ISAs using a link, without the hassle of entering bank details. Contributors can even see how much time they’ve shaved off the recipient’s savings journey.

“Customers love Gift Time, and we’ve even seen people put it on their wedding invites to collect gifts that way, which we didn't expect,” said Dave.

In another example, Instant Bank Pay provides Tembo with an extra – cheaper – way to comply with Know Your Customer regulations.

“All new customers have to authorise an open banking connection,” said Dave. “Successfully making an initial £1 payment simultaneously verifies their identity and confirms their bank details have been entered correctly.”

Staying at the forefront of innovation

Payments and open banking are continuously evolving and Tembo is leaning into its partnership with GoCardless to stay at the forefront of innovation.

“We’ve benefitted from the way Instant Bank Pay has grown to reach more and more banks,” said Dave. “We’re also talking with the GoCardless engineering team about implementing Variable Recurring Payments (VRPs), the next evolution of Direct Debit powered by open banking, to make things even slicker for customers.”

“To anyone thinking about using GoCardless, I’d say ‘go for it’. Get into the docs, get a sandbox open and just start playing with it. You’d be surprised at how cool it is.”