UK and Nordics lead Europe in open banking uptake

People living in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and the UK are most likely to embrace open banking and digital banking, a new Europe-wide survey has found.

According to the report by Mastercard, 95 per cent of 14-76 year olds in Norway use digital banking:, compared with 91 per cent in Denmark, 88 per cent in the UK and 84 per cent in Sweden.

Meanwhile, high numbers of households have internet access and smartphone access in each of these four countries, making it easier to encourage the uptake of open banking solutions.

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“By taking advantage of pan-European developments, all European banks are progressing towards a full open banking environment, but it is clear the UK and Nordics are leading the way with high consumer readiness and a number of solutions already live,” said Jim Wadsworth, senior vice president for open banking at Mastercard.

“There are varying approaches across the continent and to ensure that all European markets can take advantage of the opportunities that open banking presents, we need greater standardisation.”

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According to The Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE), which was set up by the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) in 2016 to deliver open banking, around 294 fintech companies and payment service providers have joined the open banking ecosystem in the UK, of which 102 have live offerings in the market.

By early 2021, more than three million UK consumers and businesses had used open banking enabled products to manage their finances, access credit and make payments, the report found.

Payments API volumes in the UK increased by more than 70 per cent between the fourth quarter of 2020 and the first quarter of 2021.

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