Breadcrumb

Five leading open banking providers in the UK

Written by

The GoCardless content team comprises a group of subject-matter experts in multiple fields from across GoCardless. The authors and reviewers work in the sales, marketing, legal, and finance departments. All have in-depth knowledge and experience in various aspects of payment scheme technology and the operating rules applicable to each. The team holds expertise in the well-established payment schemes such as UK Direct Debit, the European SEPA scheme, and the US ACH scheme, as well as in schemes operating in Scandinavia, Australia, and New Zealand. See full bio

Last editedSep 20232 min read

Open banking is rapidly revolutionising the fintech sector, streamlining the way millions manage their finances and data.

There are currently 295 registered financial service providers in the UK that offer open banking services. However, among these, there are a few leading the way. In this post, we’ll take you through a list of the crème de la crème of open banking providers operating in the British Isles:

Bud
Plaid
Tink
Yapily
GoCardless

UK open banking providers

1. GoCardless

GoCardless is global leading figure in the open banking industry, working to create the world's bank pay network. The platform currently offers two key solutions powered by open banking: Verified Mandates and Instant Bank Pay.

The former allows for instant account verification, while the latter allows for instant payments to be made.

Available in the UK and Germany, Instant Bank Pay works in combination with a number of other financial services, specifically GoCardless’ bank debit capabilities. This allows merchants to seamlessly fallback on bank debit if their customers don’t use online banking — eliminating the risk in offering it as an option and providing a first class payments experience for all customers.

2. Plaid

The San Francisco-based start-up, Plaid, is known across Europe and the UK as an open banking platform. Operating globally, the company prides itself on its “local expertise” and customisability.

The platform was supposed to be bought by Visa for $5.3bn in 2020. However, the deal never went ahead, and today Plaid is valued at $13.4bn.

Plaid is a favourite of big fintech companies, with as much as 80% of leading fintech companies relying on Plaid’s API infrastructure. Among its most esteemed clientele are Venom and TransferWise.

3. Tink

Tink is a Swedish-founded open banking provider operating across Europe and Latin America.

With investment funding from PayPal, the platform has been able to grow exponentially in continental Europe, specifically the European Economic Area (EEA).

While currently not as big as Bud or Plaid, Think nonetheless integrates with over 2,500 financial institutions and processes over 10 billion transactions per year.

4. Yapily

Founded by former Goldman Sachs investment banker, Stefano Vaccine back in 2017,Yapily makes its USP a focus on the social impact of open banking.

GoCardless and Intuit QuickBooks are among the fintech’s clients. The platform currently has huge success in the UK and parts of Europe, but has plans to continue its expansion across continental Europe.

5. Bud

Bud started out as a financial well-being platform, but switched their focus to open banking with the goal of enabling businesses to turn financial data into services that can accelerate growth.

Among its investors are Goldman Sachs and HSBC, however they also acquired funding via the UK government’s £2m rental recognition prize in 2018.

HSBS is one the heavyweight investors in the fintech firm, however it’s also one of its biggest clients. In fact, Bud has a partnership with the multinational universal bank and HSBC has access to Bud’s open banking API and data.

Interestingly, Bud is actually making moves to hone in on smaller firms rather than big ones, and has introduced a developer portal for SMEs to access Bud’s services.

We can help

GoCardless is a global payments solution that helps you automate payment collection, cutting down on the amount of financial admin your team needs to deal with. Find out how GoCardless can help you with one-off or recurring payments.