Tide's open banking initiative attracts 1,000 business customers in "just a few weeks"

Tide says 1,000 business customers have signed up to its Open Access service within just a few weeks, topping expectations.

In November last year, the SME bank opened up its services to non-account holders, allowing small and medium-sized businesses to connect their existing bank accounts to its platform.

It meant, for example, that customers of high-street banks could use Tide without switching banks.

Some analysts heralded the move as a potential game-changer for open banking.

According to Tide CEO Oliver Prill,Tide initially targeted attracting 1,000 business customers in three months.

“We got that within a few weeks”, said Prill.

“With established businesses generally not switching banking providers or having multiple banking providers, we reached the conclusion that the only material way competition can be introduced for the established businesses is to allow them to virtually switch to use the Tide platform without actually switching bank accounts,” Prill added.

Prill heralded the move as a “great success”.

He said the average age of the SMEs attracted to Open Access were between four and four a half years old, saying Open Access was attracting established SMEs.

Prill said that the vast majority of those SMEs banked with the big five high-street banks—HSBC Holdings, Lloyds Banking Group, Royal Bank of Scotland Group, Barclays and Standard Chartered.

Tide serves 375,000 SMEs, about 7 per cent of the market. But its growth has been stymied by the reluctance of customers to switch bank accounts.

Tide has broadened its offering beyond lending by offering its accounting products, beginning with Cashflow Invoicing, to non-account holders in a move opening up its services to customers of rival business banks.

Invoicing, expense management, payroll and credit services will also soon be available to customers of rival business banks, under Tide Open Access.