“European payments are about to get a lot faster. Today, TrueLayer’s complete payments product expands to Ireland, France, Germany, Spain, Lithuania and the Netherlands. TrueLayer Payments runs on the back of open banking and Europe’s fastest rails, letting you send and receive instant, data-rich bank payments in any app or website”

“Finicity, a Mastercard company, and Fiserv, Inc., both leaders in open banking technology, are advancing the future of open finance through secure data sharing. A data access agreement between the companies will allow thousands of Fiserv financial institution clients to enable consumers to provide clear and explicit permission to securely share their account information with apps that use Finicity’s open banking platform, offering more payment choices, access to an expanding range of financial services experiences, and improved overall financial literacy and wellbeing.”

“GoCardless, a leader in direct bank payment solutions, has launched Verified Mandates in the UK, a feature within its global bank pay platform which combines the Account Information Services (AIS) capabilities of open banking with direct debit to stop fraud before it happens.”

“The Government and regulators are committed to maintaining the UK’s leadership in the field and sustaining this momentum. We want to build on the initial success of UK Open Banking to help unlock and realise further benefits for consumers, businesses and the wider economy. Open Banking should continue to support innovation and greater competition for consumers and businesses. Critical to this will be establishing an appropriate successor to the Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE), which has played a central role in developing the UK’s Open Banking ecosystem. It is important that its successor is overseen effectively, as the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has done since 2017.”

“Green Dot Corporation (NYSE: GDOT) today announced it is partnering with Plaid, the data network powering the digital financial ecosystem, to bring secure open finance solutions to GO2bank customers. Launched in 2021, GO2bank is Green Dot’s flagship digital bank designed to give all people the power to bank seamlessly, affordably and with confidence.”

“VRPs allow customers to connect authorised payments providers to their bank account so that they can make payments on the customer’s behalf within agreed parameters. This is a change to the current Open Banking status quo where TPPs can only initiate single immediate payments and customers have to authenticate each payment separately…Working with Open Banking infrastrucutre provider TrueLayer, NatWest has delivered its VRP API ahead of schedule and conducted its first test transaction in a live environment.”

“Car dealership JCT600 has become the first retailer to use Lloyds’ new PayFrom Bank account-to-account payment product, displacing plastic cards at the online checkout. Launched in July last year, PayFrom Bank combines Mastercard’s Payment Gateway capabilities and its Open Banking Connect platform to deliver a merchant A2A payment page that covers around 95% of UK bank accounts with Open Banking APIs.”

“TrueLayer has expanded its open baking platform to five new European countries. Unicorn TrueLayer lets fintechs connect with customers’ bank accounts using APIs. As well as entering the new markets, the financial API provider says it has also added hundreds of new banks to its network after boosting connectivity in existing markets including the Netherlands and Spain. The five new European markets TrueLayer has expanded its open banking data and payments services are Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland and Portugal. TrueLayer says that more than half of all open banking traffic in the UK, Ireland and Spain is now being processed across its platform.”

“Plaid, a go-between for financial apps like Robinhood, Venmo, and Betterment and bank accounts, has created a privacy hub where you can manage all of your financial connections. The settlement requires Plaid to prominently display the privacy hub on its site. The hub, called Plaid Portal, shows users exactly which apps they’re connected to by Plaid. It can be found by accessing my.plaid.com , where the service will prompt users to set up an account. Then, it’s possible to browse connections and disconnect unused apps from bank accounts.”

“Plaid is ubiquitous—and not just in winter.    We’re talking about the fintech—not a shirt pattern—and the Silicon Valley company recently settled a class action suit accusing it of collecting excessive data from users. As a result, it will pay $58 million to all those consumers who have linked a bank account to any of Plaid’s 5,500-plus client apps, which include popular services like American Express, Venmo, Robinhood, Coinbase, and Betterment.”

“The agreement with Finicity provides FTA’s customers access to consumer-permissioned account data for secure account validation and ownership when opening new accounts. This allows consumers to connect their primary account to deposit funds into a new investment account. It signals the end of tedious validation methods like micro-deposits, which can take days to clear, and can minimize risk by verifying the ownership of an existing account.”

“TrueLayer , Europe’s leading open banking platform, has reinforced its reputation as an industry innovator by making the industry’s first Open Banking variable recurring payment (VRP) transactions with NatWest…VRPs are an additional Open Banking API that the nine largest UK banks have been instructed to build by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) for sweeping. They support third party providers (TPPs) like TrueLayer to initiate a series of payments for a customer of  variable amounts and at variable intervals , enabling the more efficient transfer of money.”

“This new strategic partnership with Tink lets banks and financial institutions add open banking to their arsenal in the fight against climate change. By integrating Tink, ecolytiq can complement their Sustainability-as-a-ServiceⓇ solution by letting their customers access users’ real-time transaction data directly from their bank accounts.”

“As debate on the future of open banking rages here in the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has moved the goalposts once more following push back from the Open Banking Implementation Entity ( OBIE) . The CMA is delaying the introduction of variable recurring payments (VRPs) by another six months after new OBIE trustee Charlotte Crosswell warned that “most if not all the CMA9” would not meet the 31 January 2022 deadline. VRPs are the latest technology in open banking, said to rival Direct Debits, and are just in their infant stages, with customers able to choose when they end and set their own payment limits.”

“Currencycloud, the experts in simplifying business in a multi-currency world, have agreed to a strategic partnership with Plaid , open finance network and payments platform, that will deliver new joint solutions to make it easy for firms in the UK, including foreign exchange brokers, Fintech companies and banks, to operate in multiple currencies. Until now, customers using the Currencycloud Direct white-label solution have had to leave the app to make a top-up payment into their account from their chosen bank – a very manual, laborious, and time-consuming process. The partnership with Plaid allows customers to fund their accounts without ever leaving the platform, simplifying the payment journey. Embedding Plaid’s Payment Initiation Services (PIS) into Currencycloud’s platform means customers will be able to pull money directly into their account from any bank, making the process that much slicker.”

“As U.S. rules and standards are developed for banks to share customer data with fintechs, there’s one obstacle that’s rarely discussed openly: Some banks simply don’t want to do it. Some traditional banks, given their legacy equipment and the extra red tape involved in such efforts, are reluctant to hand over data to third-party fintechs, Michael Bilski, CEO of North American Banking Co. in Roseville, Minnesota, said during the recent Chicago Payments Symposium hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.”

“The rapidly expanding utility of open banking for instant funding came into sharp relief early Thursday with announcements from payments processors Nuvei Corp. and Circle Internet Financial Corp. Montreal-based Nuvei , which has been cultivating its stake in the U.S. gaming market, said consumers can now move money instantly from their bank accounts to digital wallets, payment cards, or other accounts. The company is working with open-banking firm Plaid Inc. to verify bank accounts for the transfers. The new capability, called Verified Withdrawals, adds to an existing feature allowing gamblers to deposit winnings instantly into their bank accounts.”

“TrueLayer is tackling the issue of slow merchant withdrawals and refunds with the launch of a new Open Banking-based instant payouts feature. TrueLayer’s PayOuts combines Open Banking verification and fast payment rails to overcome the arduous process of conducting due diligence on customer profiles before issuing payments. The product works by matching the name provided by the customer with what’s on file at their bank to confirm the details are correct.”

“Akoya LLC announced today that TD Bank, U.S. has joined the Akoya Data Access Network . The Bank will build on its original investment in Akoya to enable fintechs, data aggregators, and other data recipients to request application programming interface (API)-based access to TD Bank’s U.S. customer data through Akoya.”

“MX, the financial data platform and leader in modern connectivity, and Payveris, the leading integrated money movement platform, are partnering to expand seamless, low-cost, and low-risk money movement services by improving account connectivity for nearly every U.S. financial institution or fintech company. With the new integration, organizations can deploy intelligent digital payment and money movement services to their customers and utilize the Payveris MoveMoney℠ platform and suite of open APIs, SDK widgets, and SSO products. The new experience is embedded into an integrated money movement solution.”

“To reach new consumers and businesses for savings and lending, Citibanamex isn’t just building new products — it’s building application programming interfaces, or APIs. This plan is also crucial for keeping existing customers who might move their accounts to a fintech. Rather than compete against those companies, Citigroup’s Mexico subsidiary (the 137-year-old Banamex, which Citi bought in 2001) is developing open banking APIs internally.”

“Mastercard sees itself as a central player in the open banking regime, and is using an acquisition in the United States to build data analytics services, including for loan assessment and invoice management, as it moves beyond its traditional focus on cards and payments. Mastercard applied to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission for accreditation to become a data recipient under the government’s consumer data right and is building integrations with banks to allow it to receive bank account data when customers consent.”

“Astra , a technology company that offers advanced bank-to-bank transfer solutions, today announced a formal partnership with Plaid , a data network powering the digital financial ecosystem, to offer an integrated solution for developers to easily enable programmatic money movement for their customers. As part of the partnership, companies can use Plaid’s Auth product in tandem with Astra’s automation platform to provide automated ACH transfers to their users with less friction.”

“Financial institutions and fintechs are increasingly embracing open API standards , which help them connect with customers and deliver innovative services that improve customer financial health and deliver surprise and delight in brand-new ways. But there’s been no official standard framework for APIs in the U.S. — until now, with the establishment of the Financial Data Exchange.”