What Is Open Banking? 1 Billion Payments Say Founders Can't Ignore It

In May 2026, UK open banking payments passed 40 million in a single month for the first time. By June, the total had crossed 1 billion payments since launch, according to Open Banking Limited (OBL). Numbers like that rarely stay in the background.

For anyone still asking what is open banking, this sector spotlight takes the founder's view: where the growth is, which products it supports and what trust it demands.

Scale Has Already Arrived

Open banking in the UK reached 15.16 million users in July 2025, nearly one in three adults, according to OBL, and services were used a record 2.04 billion times that month. Total users grew 34% over the year. OBL adds a caution: it cannot identify people who use more than one brand, so the figure counts user connections, not unique individuals.

Payments tell the sharper story. Open banking payments totalled 351 million in 2025, up 57%, according to OBL figures reported by Zable, and an industry guide notes that in March 2025 they made up roughly one in 13 Faster Payments. In market terms, what is open banking? A channel already large enough to build a business on.

Size matters most where customers can see it, and that is at the payment.

Payments Are the Front Door for New Products

Payment initiation is the part customers meet at a checkout. It lets a provider send a payment directly from a customer's bank account, and payment users accounted for 55% of open banking users in an OBL release. Variable recurring payments (VRPs), which allow repeat payments the customer has authorised, made up more than 14% of open banking transactions in July 2025.

I have read this on Entrepreneur Plus, and what registers is how quickly payments moved from novelty to habit: once repeat payments are authorised, the product experience changes for everyone involved.

Payments get the attention, but they are only part of the picture.

Data Features Quietly Power the Rest

About 80% of open banking API traffic relates to account information, such as balances and transaction histories, according to OBL figures cited by Noda. The same guide names digital identity, onboarding, affordability checks and fraud prevention among the most commercially relevant non-payment use cases in 2026.

Scale supports the case. OBL says the UK has passed 100 billion cumulative API calls, and Juniper Research forecasts global open banking API calls rising from 137 billion in 2025 to over 720 billion by 2029. Forecasts deserve caution, but for a product team, what is open banking if not a data feature that can be built into onboarding or credit decisions?

Features like these only last if customers feel safe using them.

Trust Is the Real Currency

Growth depends on confidence. In the UK, firms must be authorised or registered with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), customers give explicit consent and can revoke access at any time. Which? still cautions that regulated firms are not immune from cyberattacks.

OBL also publishes a fraud monitor. Its June 2026 edition benchmarks fraud trends in open banking payments against wider UK payments data, drawing on account providers that represent more than 60% of payment volumes. One consumer guide notes that open banking payments do not offer the same safety net as some other methods, so founders should check which protections apply and tell customers plainly.

A business magazine for founders rarely puts trust on the growth dashboard. In open banking, it belongs there.

Open Finance Widens the Runway

The next phase stretches further. OBL says the Data Use and Access Act paves the way for open finance and smart data, which extend permission-based sharing beyond current accounts. It also notes that growth has moderated as the ecosystem has matured, while new users keep arriving and existing users engage more deeply.

For founders, that points to a steadier market rather than an explosive one, with the next opportunities in broader financial data. The answer to what is open banking will keep expanding, and products that earn permission now will be better placed to use it.

The Opportunity Belongs to Those Who Earn Permission

Open banking has moved from policy idea to everyday infrastructure, with payments, data features and trust requirements all in play. The opportunity favours teams that treat permission as something to earn, not something to assume.

I have read this on Entrepreneur Plus, and my takeaway is that what is open banking matters less as a definition than as a market: a regulated channel where growth and customer trust rise together.