NS&I adds open banking payment option via Ecospend

One of the UK’s largest savings organisations, NS&I, has added open banking as a payment option for customers.

National Savings And Investments (NS&I) customers will soon be able to ‘pay by bank’ if they’re looking to purchase Premium Bonds or top-up their ISAs.

Open banking provider Ecospend has been selected by NS&I to build and implement the technology, having also been the exclusive open banking payments provider to HMRC since March 2021 and having handled over £13bn worth of tax payments.

“I am pleased that NS&I is able to offer our customers the benefits of the latest banking technology to top up their easy-access savings accounts,” said NS&I CEO Dax Harkins.

"Customers with most UK major banks and building societies will soon find that they can smoothly make transfers into their NS&I variable savings accounts as we start to roll out Pay by bank account over the coming weeks.”

NS&I has over 25 million customers, but only some 6 million customers are registered online will be able to use the new ‘pay by bank’ option.

Even so, with quarterly inflows (including reinvestments) of over £10bn and with bank transfers already accounting for some 44 per cent of top-ups, the open banking payment volumes could be vast.

That said, as open banking payments use the same rails as Faster Payment, each bank still sets its own upper limit on the value of payment allowed, typically between £10,000 and £50,000 depending on the bank, which may have an impact on the number of customers who use this option.