TrueLayer’s study shows surge in payments made through Open Banking, during lockdown

By Megha Bhattacharya

New research by European financial API provider, TrueLayer, has revealed that the use of Payment Initiation grew around 832% between March and July in the UK. The majority of the growth, i.e., around 88% was from people with bank accounts held at traditional financial institutions such as Lloyds or Barclays. 12%of growth came from account holders at challenger banks such as Monzo and Revolut.

Shefali Roy, COO, and CCO of TrueLayer said, “These statistics reveal that even during a crisis, people are willing to quickly embrace technological innovation if they believe it makes their life better or more convenient.

“We were recording steady growth in the adoption of Payment Initiation since its inception last year. The surge during lockdown has been remarkable and has not been confined to any one group of people – it is very much a broad-based trend. However, perhaps the most interesting result our analyses revealed is that growth has not dropped off – meaning that those who began using Payment Initiation during lockdown are continuing to do so after restrictions were eased.”

Payment Initiation (PI) allows payments to be made directly via a customer’s online banking. This lowers transaction fees than other means of online payments, cuts processing times, and secures the process while using the bank’s security provisions.

The company had previously recorded a steady 43% month on month increase in PI adoption. In March, use shot up 460% as many people began working from home or were furloughed. TrueLayer is estimated to account for more than half of the PI market in the UK.

“Payment Initiation obviously has some way to go before it accounts for a significant proportion of the payments market; nevertheless, this surge in growth appears to mark a step-change in adoption and it is yet another unforeseen impact on consumer behaviour caused by the Pandemic,” Roy concluded.