Pay.UK discusses scalable end-to-end payments at Open Banking Expo 2024

Our Head of Product, Euan Ballantyne, recently led a spotlight presentation and panel session at Open Banking’s 2024 Expo (OB Expo), discussing scalable end-to-end payments journeys in the retail sector.

With representatives from UK and European financial institutions, fintech organisations and regulators, this year’s two-day event focused on key themes affecting the open banking and open finance ecosystem, including the future of payments, regulation, the National Payments Vision (NPV), fraud, and variable recurring payments (VRPs).

On day one, Euan took part in a panel discussion that explored how a truly commercial VRP model could work and be delivered. During the debate, the panel of industry experts discussed their perspectives on:

• VRPs, from customer enablement to regulation
• The actions that need to be taken by the payments ecosystem to ensure VRPs become a viable competitive payment method that works for all
• The development of the Payment System Regulator’s proposed phase 1 VRP pilot. 

Overall, the panellists agreed that there is strong industry appetite to make VRPs live, but there are sometimes contrasting views on key elements, such as a proposed price that payment initiation service providers (PISPs) might be asked to pay to payment service providers (PSPs) on each transaction.

With a focus on ‘Creating a scalable alternative to card payments’, Euan’s spotlight presentation on day two delivered an in-depth analysis of the current landscape of open banking transactions, providing insight into its performance metrics when associated with the Faster Payments System (FPS). As of August 2024, open banking transactions had reached 25 million per month, accounting for 5.8% of FPS traffic. By extrapolating current trends, by 2030, open banking transaction volumes could reach 1 billion per annum. 

To enable the wider use of open banking-initiated payments, the industry is expanding the use of VRPs through a number of actions and phases recommended by the Joint Regulatory Oversight Committee (JROC). Euan concluded in his presentation that continued long-term industry collaboration is vital to achieving this and the exponential growth of open banking.

Euan commented, “Industry collaboration is paramount to ensure the continued successful expansion of open banking and this year’s OB Expo provided an excellent platform on which to build relationships, explore solutions and drive innovation.”