HMRC’s open banking payments via Ecospend hits £10.5bn

Since introducing open banking payments as an option for making payments in March 2021, the UK’s HM Revenue & Customs has now processed over £10.5bn with the help of its open banking partner Ecospend.

That figure marks an incredible acceleration in the last 12 months, with the total sitting at just £2.5bn back in January 2022.

Part of the increase is due to the introduction of open banking payments to HMRC’s mobile app in February 2022, with the new payment method racking up £123m on the app alone.

“The rapid adoption of our Open Banking payment solution through the HMRC app is hard evidence that account-to-account payments are the best way to meet consumers’ expectations for a fast and simple payment journey,” said James Hickman,Ecospend’s chief commercial officer.

“We hope that the success of our work with HMRC is a clear demonstration of the benefits that Open Banking can provide to the public sector, businesses and consumers alike and look forward to working with other Government departments, as well as businesses from a range of industries to support them with our innovative payment solution.”

While open banking payments were originally only available for people paying their self-assessment tax returns, in August 2022 HMRC announced this had expanded to 24 different types of tax regimes including PAYE, corporation tax and VAT.

Ecospend at the time said open banking payments had saved HMRC over £500,000 worth of interchange charges, and saved users countless hours of frustration in payment mistakes caused by incorrect sort codes and account numbers being used.

Ecospend had a busy year of its own, with the fintech being acquired by Swedish payments group Trustly in May 2022 as part of its expansion into open banking payments.

HMRC originally extended a £3m tender for an open banking payments provider in September 2020, which was won by Ecospend in February 2021.