Tiger Brokers is a NASDAQ-listed online broker used by more than 9m people worldwide to trade stocks, options, and futures.
This case study describes the functionality enabled by Akahu for New Zealand users.
Optimising AML and other compliance processes.
Displaying the balance of connected accounts.
Enabling fast, cheap, in-app payments.
Users can connect New Zealand bank accounts to their Tiger Brokers account via an OAuth 2.0 connection flow.
This connection flow is hosted by Akahu. At the end of the connection flow, the user redirects back to Tiger Brokers. After a token exchange, Tiger Brokers holds a user token that enables programmatic interactivity with connected accounts via Akahu's API. The user token is scoped to the specific permissions granted by the user during the connection flow.
Tiger Brokers utilises bank data for three compliance processes.
Address verification: Verifying the user's address by matching against the address hold on file by the bank.
Bank account verification: Verifying the bank account number, and verifying that the bank account is held in the name of the user.
Link to the claimed identity: Matching the holder or party name on the connected bank account to the name on the user's driver licence or passport. If there's a match, then there's no need for biometric verification because the user has already been linked to their claimed identity.
Account data is used to display the details of connected bank accounts, along with their account balance (when relevant).
This enables the user to make trading decisions in Tiger Brokers without needing to bump back and forth with their bank app.
Once a user has set up a one-off or recurring payment, Tiger Brokers can initiate each payment with an API call. The response will confirm that the bank has processed the payment request, and will provide an ETA for those funds.
Reconciliation: Tiger Brokers can input a unique reference in the payment request to ensure automatic reconciliation when the funds arrive in their account.
Frictionless payments: When the payment initiation request is confirmed by the bank (within seconds), Tiger Brokers can choose to fund the user's account immediately so the user can start trading instead of waiting for their funds to be received, reconciled, and allocated to their account. This can be a great way to activate or reactivate users.
Auto-investing (future feature): Users can set up recommended investing behaviours from within the Tiger Brokers app, such as dollar cost averaging.