Open banking reaches five million users
More than five million people are now using open banking, in the latest boost for the data-sharing technology.
It took 10 months to grow the number of users from one to two million in 2020 and then just four months to increase the figure from four to five million.
The Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE) said that this “impressive trajectory” of growth demonstrates the increasing appetite for consumers and small businesses to use open banking.
It said payments were the driving force behind the rapid growth, after seeing nearly 625,000 additional payments between December 2021 and January 2022.
The OBIE said that a significant factor in this payments growth was HMRC’s incorporation of a ‘pay by bank’ option into its annual self-assessment process. This led to a 19.3 per cent rise in the total number of payments made via open banking from December to reach 3.86 million in January.
Open banking reached its four-year anniversary last month, with 4.5 million users reported at the time.
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“Open banking was predicated on delivering increased competition and providing consumers and small businesses with new and innovative solutions,” said Charlotte Crosswell, trustee of the OBIE.
“It is therefore extremely encouraging to see that more than five million active users are now leveraging the benefits of open banking.
“This accelerated growth strongly represents a world-leading and thriving ecosystem bringing an ever-increasing range of real-world solutions, that in turn is driving mass user adoption.
“As open banking technology embeds and becomes easier to use, we look forward to seeing this momentum continue.”
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“What a great time to be joining the OBIE,” said Henk Van Hulle, who was appointed as chief executive earlier this month.
“This is great news for the open banking community. I am delighted to see such accelerated growth in end-user adoption rates.
“This demonstrates that the tremendous efforts of everyone across the whole ecosystem continue to bear fruit. It also shows what a superb job the team at the OBIE are doing in building and running the supporting infrastructure.”
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“This is positive news for all involved in open banking – for those entrepreneurs who have built fintech businesses based on the foundations of open banking, for the investment community funding the continued expansion of products and services, and for government as it continues to examine how best to extend open banking functionality into other areas of the economy,” added David Beardmore, ecosystem development director at the OBIE.
Several peer-to-peer lending platforms use open banking such as Rebuildingsociety, Kuflink, JustUs and ArchOver, while more are implementing it or looking at doing so.