Despite the disruption caused by Covid-19, open banking and the fintech ecosystem have been boosted by the period of lockdown. According to an OBIE survey of 2,000 UK adults, one-in-five started using online banking apps during lockdown for the first time, 54% of whom now using them regularly.
As mentioned in the OBIE’s last figures from January 2020, the numbers are likely an underestimation of the true size of open banking adoption given the data is provided by the CMA9 (the nine largest UK-based banks) and doesn’t include the likes of Starling Bank, Monzo, and so on. While the OBIE said money management apps and account aggregation are the most popular use cases of the open banking today, payments seem to be the upcoming area of growth for the technology.
Banks like NatWest and fintechs including Monzo and Nutmeg have been rolling out open banking payments in 2020, which allows users to initiate bank transfers without using sort codes and account numbers, according to AltFi.
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