First the summer of all summers – and now Open Banking!
It has been a crazy year so far. First the summer of all summers – and now Open Banking!
Since starting out over 8 years ago talking about how bank data could be used to better the world we live in – to bring convenience to so much of what we do online we have seen huge changes. I’m excited to say that Open Banking is now here! What started in the UK as a move to position the UK at the forefront of PSD2 in Europe is quickly becoming a global trend.
When we started out, we believed that we could effect change from the bottom up – that by offering increased conversion, reduced costs and lower fraud rates would be more than enough to get the market to adopt our services.
The big lesson, only realised over the last couple of years, was that in a heavily regulated space like financial services – this isn’t enough. You also need top-down pressure from the likes of the regulators and industry bodies to really create change. This has come into focus over the last couple of months as we have seen with the support of the CMA, FCA and the government overall, not to mention the pioneering work the OBIE is doing, Open Banking finally start to generate momentum.
I would love to hear your thoughts and experiences though as this has been a new revelation for me. Have you experienced similar dynamics in other heavily regulated industries?
Just waiting for the market to change isn’t our style though – so we continue to do as much as we can to support and speed the pace of change. Here’s our list of activities that I wanted to share and, if interested, get your involvement with:
Open Banking Excellence continues to build up steam and this month we are focusing on Payments & PISP. Please do register and join us.
Building on the success of our Edinburgh event, Open Banking Excellence meetup is also launching in London next week on the 19th of September. Register here for London.
Open Banking Excellence meetup is members driven and up to the community to build so please share these meetups with your local networks. Everyone involved would very much appreciate any support you can give.
With next week being a busy week for events, FinTech and Scotland we have summarised everything in a blog post for you to peruse.
Very shortly we’ll be commencing our own bi-weekly newsletter to keep you up to date with all that’s hot in the world of Open Banking, PSD2 and FinTech. You can sign up for our newsletter here.
This month we are also re-launching NoMo with support for Open Banking – the cheeky personal finance that aims to answer the one, most critical question – can I go out tonight! Initially, on iOS you can sign up here for the beta.
To say it has been a busy year is an understatement. First, our own FCA authorisation as an AISP, launching our own Open Banking Data API’s and more recently working with CYBG and the B App – there’s been a huge amount. With a great team you can certainly conquer the world!
What has been most exciting is to see the use cases and understanding of the true value of bank data start to come into focus. We will be launching a number of offerings over the next few months in line with this and opening up the world of bank data. As they say, it’s not the data that counts – it’s what you do with it!
