A remarkable open banking milestone in the UK

Monthly open banking payments surpassed 11 million in July 2023

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Open Banking Ltd (OBL), the entity that oversees the implementation of open banking in the UK, announced a significant milestone today.

Here are a few key points:

• Open banking processed over 11.4 million payments in July 2023, showing a 9.3% increase from the previous month.

• Year-to-date data for 2023 compared to 2022 demonstrates a doubling of total payments, with a growth rate of 102.4%.

• In July 2023, active payment users rose to 4.2 million, marking a 10.5% increase from June 2023 and a 68.2% surge from July 2022.

• Key drivers of growth include single domestic payments, which saw 10.5 million transactions in July, an 8% increase from June.

• Factors such as government payment solutions and partnerships with major UK financial institutions and investment platforms contributed to this growth. These institutions introduced 'pay by bank' options, allowing users to fund various savings and investment products.

• The top three use cases for open banking transactions are account top-ups, credit card bill payments, and e-commerce transactions.

• Variable recurring payments (VRPs) also experienced significant growth, with 872,000 transactions in July, a 28.7% increase from the previous month.

• Overall data indicates that single domestic payments have reached 163.2 million, with a more pronounced surge to 65 million in the year-to-date, signifying a significant 95.6% increase compared to the same period in the previous year.

Such adoption rate data is even more impressive given that open banking is not doing so well in other parts of the world (I’m looking at you Canada).