UK: open banking begins managed roll out – Yolt, the ING money management app, succesfully connected to Lloyds

The Open Banking Implementation Entity (the ‘OBIE’), the body created by the UK’s largest personal and small business current account providers to create a better way to move, manage and make more of your money, has confirmed that the roll out of Open Banking in the UK has begun.

Over the course of the next six weeks the OBIE will bring the UK’s largest account providers and regulated third parties online and fully test the system using selected testing accounts only. This will enable all parties to be absolutely certain that the system is stable, fully secure and ready for UK consumers and small businesses.

Imran Gulamhuseinwala, Trustee of the OBIE, said:
“This is a major step towards giving the customer real ownership and control of their finances and data. From 13 January, regulated companies can start integrating with Open Banking and testing their products. Then, from March 2018, consumers and small businesses across the UK can start to make the most of a dynamic new range of financial services.

“The UK is the first nation in the world to launch Open Banking and many other countries are looking to our example. We should be immensely proud to be leading the revolution in retail and business banking because it means that UK customers will have more choice about how they manage and move their money.”

Yolt, the smart money management app owned by ING, has become the first third party provider to complete a successful connection with a CMA9 bank – Lloyds – under the new Open Banking system.

The first data sharing test run was made on 17 January between Yolt -currently operating in open beta in the UK – and Lloyds Banking Group, according to finextra. Yolt says connections with more CMA9 banks will come onstream when the extended deadline for compliance ends in early March. At the moment, just Lloyds, Danske Bank and Allied Irish Bank have met the original 13 January data sharing date.Yolt’s tie up with Lloyds follows an integration via API with Starling Bank last year.

„We’ve just gone live with Starling Bank, our first API integration, and we are ready to connect with new partners on our platform.” Yolt CTO Roderick Simons said in November 2017.

Imran Gulamhuseinwala, implementation trustee at Open Banking, says: “We can confirm that Yolt became the first third party provider to integrate with a member of the CMA9 earlier this month. These are the first, small steps towards genuine revolution in banking in the UK.”

The OBIE was created by the UK’s nine largest personal and small business current account providers (the ‘CMA9’) in 2016, after an inquiry by the Competition and Markets Authority (the ‘CMA’) determined that Open Banking could bring new competition and innovation to an industry it felt needed shaking up.

Open Banking is a secure set of technologies and standards that allow customers to give companies other than their bank or building society permission to securely access their accounts. This means customers can, if they choose, easily use services from a range of different types of regulated companies without the need to share credentials with any third parties. They may, for example, choose to aggregate a view of all of their accounts through one provider or allow a company to analyse their account data to offer automated budgeting advice or cheaper overdrafts.

Companies using Open Banking to deliver their services have to be authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) or an equivalent European Regulator. The FCA will start publishing the names of approved companies on its Register from 13 January 2018.
Open Banking runs on a well-established communications technology called Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and is designed with customer security foremost in mind.

Source: OBIE