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Eight years after its launch, Open Banking has become a foundational layer of the UK’s financial system rather than a niche regulatory initiative.
From experiment to national infrastructure
More than 16.5 million user connections are now live across the country, reflecting how deeply embedded Open Banking-enabled services have become in everyday financial activity for both consumers and businesses.
Introduced in January 2018 following the Competition and Markets Authority’s Retail Banking Market Investigation Order, it was initially designed to increase competition in retail banking.
Since then, it has evolved into a core piece of digital infrastructure, underpinning everything from personal finance management to SME cashflow and payments.
Policy Momentum Builds Around Growth and SME Lending
The eighth anniversary comes amid renewed political and regulatory attention.
In a recent letter to the Prime Minister, the Financial Conduct Authority identified Open Banking as a key lever for driving economic growth, particularly through improved access to finance for small and medium-sized enterprises.
This endorsement matters. With 145 authorised third-party providers now operating in the ecosystem, it has moved decisively beyond compliance into commercial scale.
Account-to-account payments, in particular, are gaining traction as businesses and consumers seek alternatives to high-cost card payments and slow legacy bank transfers.
Payments Lead Adoption — and Attract Criminal Attention
Payments remain the single biggest driver of adoption. More than 15 million people and businesses — close to one in three UK adults — used Open Banking-powered services during the summer months, with the total value of payments in July reaching £29.89m.
However, scale inevitably brings scrutiny from fraudsters.
New data from Open Banking Limited covering March 2024 to September 2025 shows that while overall fraud rates remain low, authorised push payment (APP) scams are rising in prominence.
In H1 2025, fraud affecting Open Banking payments accounted for just 0.013% of transactions by volume and 0.020% by value — significantly below industry averages.
Yet APP scams now represent 74% of all Open Banking fraud cases, reflecting broader trends across the payments industry rather than a weakness unique to Open Banking.
Resilience Today, Collaboration Required Tomorrow
Industry figures stress that Open Banking remains resilient.
Christian Delesalle, head of participant support at Open Banking Limited, notes that fraud rates continue to sit well below sector benchmarks, even as criminals increasingly deploy artificial intelligence to manipulate victims.
The challenge now is coordination.
As Open Banking usage grows, banks, payment providers and technology firms must deepen collaboration to stay ahead of more sophisticated, AI-enabled fraud techniques. Data sharing, real-time risk signals and consistent consumer protections will be essential.
Laying the Groundwork for Open Finance
Beyond payments, the standards, governance and infrastructure developed are forming the blueprint for Open Finance.
New data-sharing services are already emerging across pensions, investments, insurance, energy, telecoms and housing.
Eight years in, Open Banking is no longer about proving the concept.
The focus has shifted to ensuring long-term structures that protect the UK’s world-leading position — and allow the ecosystem to scale safely as it becomes ever more central to the digital economy.
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