“Can a traditional Italian family bank remain relevant by becoming the API/open-finance backbone (via Fabrick) for the Italian fintech ecosystem?”
Banca Sella is a 140-year-old Italian family-owned bank that has consistently positioned itself as an innovation-forward institution — it claims to be the first Italian bank to launch an API banking platform. Its embedded finance strategy runs primarily through its sister company Fabrick (Sella Group's open finance platform), which provides API infrastructure, payment orchestration (Fabrick Payment Orchestra, evolved from GestPay), and open banking rails to Sella's own products and to third-party fintechs. Recent moves include merchant BNPL (PayPal) and pre-KYC screening (Trustfull) — indicative of a bank leveraging fintech partnerships rather than building everything in-house.