UK open banking payments hit record high in July, up 102% YoY

Adoption of open banking payments reached a record high in July, with the latest figures from Open Banking Limited showing 11.4m payments last month.

This is an increase of 9.3 per cent month-on-month by volume of payments and a sizeable 102.4 per cent year-on-year.

“The doubling of total payments in just one a year is a remarkable achievement and testament to the transformative impact of open banking,” Marion King, chair and trustee of Open Banking Limited said.

“It reinforces the pivotal role open banking plays in driving financial inclusion, innovation, and consumer empowerment.”

The uptick has been driven by a jump in the number of institutions offering ‘pay by bank’ options to their customers, notably including NS&I and Hargreaves Lansdown.

One-off domestic payments make up the lion's share of open banking payments volume—used for account top-ups, bill payments or eCommerce purchases—with 10.5m of these transactions last month (92 per cent of the total volume).

Variable recurring payments meanwhile grew by 28.7 per cent MoM to 872,000 transactions in July.

"The uses cases, while growing, are still largely based on account top ups, credit card payments and a smattering of other examples," Siamac Rezaiezadeh, VP of product marketing and insights at GoCardless said.

"When you compare this to the billions of payments each year that go through direct debit and card systems, it's obvious that open banking payments have a lot of room to grow."

While cumulative figures weren’t shared, it’s quite likely that for the year-to-date open banking payments have now overtaken the total number of payments made throughout the whole of 2022.