The UK's open banking system reached 1 billion payments and 100 billion API calls. US consumers remain cautious, with only 11% using the service, a PYMNTS study found.
The UK's open banking system has processed more than 1 billion payments since its launch, Open Banking Limited said Tuesday. The ecosystem also logged 100 billion API calls across member banks, the organization said in a release.
"These milestones reinforce the UK's position as a global leader in open banking and demonstrate an ecosystem that continues to scale in both volume and capability," Henk Van Hulle, CEO of Open Banking Limited, said in a statement. "As adoption increases and new use cases emerge, open banking will play an increasingly vital role in supporting competition, innovation and growth across the UK's financial services landscape."
Monthly data shows the system is still accelerating. June saw 2.81 billion API calls, a 4.4% increase from May and the highest monthly volume ever. Payment volumes reached 40.1 million. Single domestic payments slipped 1.2%, but variable recurring payments rose 6.7% month over month, the release said. Average response times improved to 349 milliseconds, 50 milliseconds faster than the prior period.
The milestone underscores the growing adoption of open banking, a system that lets third-party providers access customer financial data with permission. The UK's Competition and Markets Authority mandated the framework in 2018, forcing the country's nine largest banks to share data. That has spawned a wave of fintech apps for budgeting, lending and account aggregation.
Yet the US market is still early. A recent PYMNTS Intelligence study, done with Trustly, found that 46% of American consumers say they would use open banking payments for at least one purchase type, including monthly bills, groceries and subscriptions. But only 11% have actually used them. "Providers still face work explaining when consumers should choose account-to-account payments instead of cards, digital wallets or traditional bank bill pay," PYMNTS wrote.
For traditional payment networks, the UK data signals a longer-term shift. Visa and Mastercard rely on interchange fees from card transactions. Open banking payments bypass those networks entirely, settling directly between bank accounts. The UK's 1 billion payments, while still a fraction of total card volume, show the model can scale. UK banks including Barclays, HSBC and Lloyds are part of the ecosystem, facing both competitive pressure from fintechs and opportunities to build their own open banking services.
Open Banking Limited's figures suggest the trend is accelerating. The 2.81 billion API calls in June were the highest on record. Variable recurring payments, which allow recurring bill payments without card details, grew faster than one-off transactions. That pattern mirrors the shift seen in the US with account-to-account payments like debit cards and ACH, but with more direct integration.
The next open banking milestone will depend on how quickly consumers and businesses adopt account-to-account payments for everyday spending. The UK's model is often cited as a blueprint for other countries, including Australia, Brazil and the European Union. The US lacks a similar mandate, leaving adoption to private-sector agreements and consumer demand.
In the UK, the 1 billion payment milestone came eight years after the system's debut. The pace of growth suggests the second billion will come faster. The CMA's mandate requires banks to maintain the infrastructure, but the direction of travel is set by consumer choice.
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