Open banking
Customers letting authorised third parties access their payment account data and initiate payments through secure APIs.
Open banking is the arrangement in which customers can let authorised third parties access their payment account data or initiate payments from their accounts through secure, standardised interfaces provided by their bank. In the European Union and the UK it rests on PSD2 and the UK Payment Services Regulations, with UK API standards first developed under a competition remedy and the FCA now setting out the framework's future. For agents, open banking provides regulated, revocable channels to read accounts and pay, in place of credential sharing.
Agent Minute explains this term on 15 October 2026.
Related terms
Open financeExtending open banking's customer-permissioned data sharing beyond payment accounts to savings, credit, investments and insurance.Account information serviceAn online service providing consolidated information on a user's payment accounts held with other providers.Payment initiation serviceA service that initiates a payment order at the user's request from an account held at another provider.Third-party provider (TPP)The common name for providers that access accounts held elsewhere, such as account information and payment initiation providers.UK Open Banking StandardThe UK's API specifications, security profile and customer experience guidelines for open banking.