Mobile payments platform Auka launched its services in Europe after pivoting* from mCASH earlier this year.

Auka has built a payment infrastructure entirely on the Google Cloud Platform and is the first fully licensed and regulated financial company to do so. The company’s platform-as-a-service model takes only three months for a bank to integrate. The payments infrastructure connects banks to consumers and merchants with white-labeled P2P payments, POS solutions, and merchant services.

This news comes just after the European Parliament approved the Payment Service Directive and Access to Accounts initiative, which will require banks to make their APIs available to third parties, thus opening the once-restricted payment system to the open markets. This means it’s in a bank’s best interest to offer an easy-to-use API to avoid losing out on transaction revenue. Auka CEO Daniel Döderlein explains:

Banks need to be prepared to use the Access to Accounts (XS2A) provision within the new regulations to its full extent. It’s not just about complying with requests to provide their API, but building the kind of sticky, high-frequency use services that they can then plug their rivals’ APIs into, ensuring that they are the brand that customers have facetime with.

Auka launched as mCASH in 2014 and has 17 bank customers with thousands of merchant clients. The Norway-based company debuted at FinovateFall 2014.

Google Cloud Platform presented its Big Data secret at FinDEVr San Francisco 2014.

*Auka is the parent company of mCASH, which was acquired by the second largest bank in Norway. mCASH kept the rights to all IP outside of Norway and rebranded that company to Auka.