開放銀行業務在英國吸引了 700 萬活躍用戶：這對客戶、銀行和金融科技公司意味著什麼

Open Banking Hits 7 Million Active Users In The UK: Here’s What That Means For Customers, Banks And Fintechs
Meaghan Johnson

Open Banking adoption in the UK hits 9% of the digitally active population

AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Seven million consumers and SMEs in the UK are now actively using Open Banking services, Open Banking Ltd, a non-profit responsible supervision, ecosystem enablement and supporting infrastructure and services, announced on Monday.

The number marks a significant milestone for the six-year-old regulation. In response to a 2016 report by The Competition and Markets Authority, which highlighted the limited competition between established and newer banks in the UK, the CMA recommended the implementation of Open Banking. Since, the regulation has since enabled customers and SMEs to securely share their current account information with third-party providers.

Over the past 12 months, the trend for open banking products and services in the UK and Europe has shifted from basic account aggregation to innovative use cases, particularly in lending and identification. This is fantastic news for customers, fintechs, and banks, as each has much to gain by applying open APIs to product innovation.

Beyond Aggregation: Lending and Identity

One of the most compelling use cases for open banking lies in identity. B2B fintech companies such as Yapily, TrueLayer, Klarna, and FinLeap Connect provide Know Your Customer products that enable new clients to be verified solely through open banking. To fulfill KYC requirements for a new product application, a user can simply share their bank account data from an external account and initiate a payment of 0.10 cents from that account to the bank, EMI, or banking partner they are applying to. This approach reduces onboarding time, screens, and potential drop-off points.

A handful of neobanks like Bunq and Wise use open banking to authenticate existing customers. From the customer perspective, this provides a far superior experience to the traditional approach of calling customer support, having an account or card blocked, and submitting PDFs to prove sources of income. From the bank's perspective, this reduces the volume of calls to call centers and increases brand loyalty by offering ways to mitigate card or account disruption due to suspected fraud or additional KYC requirements.