As part of the webinar series ‘The Fintech Times presents’, this latest collaboration between three key industry players included tackling the hot topic of the hour, open banking payments.
With confirmation of payee and open banking now standard in most high street bank accounts, this webinar looked at the challenges and opportunities presented by open banking implementation, including hearing how fintechs and banks are working together. From office back end adjustments to adapting user experience, this webinar asked what does the future of open banking hold and how can banks further implement the current legislation while understanding the current limitations and asking what can be done to further embolden the market.
Guests included Helen Child, Co-Founder, Open Banking Excellence, Ed Adshead-Grant, General Manager & Director, Payments, Bottomline Technologies and Craig Tillotson, CEO, Ordo. The webinar was hosted by Polly Jean Harrison, journalist at The Fintech Times.
To kick off the webinar, Polly asked what was the big success story of open banking. And while Helen replied that actually, there were so many, she highlighted the role of institutions within the UK that had helped to make them possible, such as the FCA.
Helen said: “We should actually thank the FCA for creating an environment that inspires innovation.” She referenced Captain Tom, the centenarian who raised almost £33million for charity as he approached his 100th birthday. She said, “The majority of payments were collected by Open Banking – yet the general public doesn’t need to know that. It’s just a utility – like the plumbing in a house, but it speaks as to where we are now on the growth trajectory. It’s an exciting sector.”
Craig added, “To me one of the big success stories of open banking in particular is my area of interest, which is open banking payments is in the UK where we have made what is technically an incredibly complex piece of technology and architecture, simple, and that is the goal when I do demonstrations of how the Ordo service works to customers.”
Ed referenced the awareness that consumers now have about open banking facilities. He said: “Yes, there’s a lot of hyperbole around, but there really is a significant change that can help the consumer have faster decisions, more informed decisions, and safer decisions; so we’re spending a lot of time at the moment on confirmation of payee. In the UK now people think ‘oh that’s a kind of anti-fraud thing to stop a particular type of fraud check’ when you’re paying the beneficiary name, but underneath it’s powered by open banking.”
Polly then asked if there was still a place for traditional payments?
Craig answered and said, “Well I think what open banking payments has given us, businesses and consumers, more choices. And over time, they will make the choices and they will retire the traditional payment methods they used to daily one to one. Now some of these payment methods like cards, I think will be around for many many years to come. They have some great use cases whether it be contactless or using your card internationally that are really much harder for open banking progress. Having said that, I think open banking is opening new doors.”
But for Ed the main concern was all about messaging. He said, “For those of us that work in open banking we’ve got to make sure we don’t fall into that trap of talking our own language, with all the acronyms that we bring in. As this whole entrepreneur engine kick starts we’ve got to translate and get that message right.”
You can watch the webinar in full, here.
