Article

Open Banking in 2025: Now Part of the UK’s Everyday Financial Life

29 January 2026

Explore how this analysis…

  • Highlights the key trends shaping open banking activity in 2025
  • Showcases growth patterns across payments, API usage and user connections
  • Explains reliability and performance measures in clear, accessible language
  • Surfaces the shifts emerging in sweeping variable recurring payments (VRP) and Payment information services (PI)S usage
  • Provides sector‑specific reflections for banks, fintechs, policymakers and the wider ecosystem
  • Sets the scene for what these trends mean as we move into 2026

Author: Anton Joachim, OBL Data Scientist

Throughout 2025, open banking continued to mature, with improvements in scale, stability and performance increasingly reflecting the characteristics of everyday financial infrastructure. It was used more frequently by consumers and businesses with greater consistency and stability than ever before.

Across the year, payments climbed to 351 million, a 57% increase with growth across both sweeping VRP and single domestic payments. API calls rose to 24 billion, up 27% on 2024 and user connections* reached 16.5 million by December up from 12.1 million a year earlier. Throughout this expansion, the system continued to perform well. Weighted availability (a measure of uptime) remained above 99.50% across the year, and average response times improved to 324ms, meaning banks’ systems responded more quickly to requests. In simple terms, the service handled more activity while becoming faster and more consistent.

Taken together, this paints a picture of a maturing, resilient service: reliable, widely used, operating quietly in the background, increasingly powering the UK’s digital economy at scale.

Payments: Momentum across Single Domestic Payments and Sweeping Variable Recurring Payments

Payments continued their strong upward trajectory in 2025, reaching 351 million transactions, an 57% increase year-on-year.

Two trends stood out:

  • Sweeping VRP volumes nearly doubled (+98% YoY), showing more consumers using open banking for recurring “me-to-me” transfers.
  • Single domestic payments grew 52%, underling broadening adoption for day-to-day payments.

The monthly trendline showed sustained growth from January through to December, suggesting that payment volumes are now rising steadily across use cases.

What this means for you

Banks: a clear signal that open banking payments are scaling reliably – an opportunity to enhance customer journeys

Fintechs: growing VRP usage opens space for new propositions around automation, financial wellbeing, and embedded payments.

Policy & regulators: Demonstrates strong customer appetite and a steady, secure transition towards more competitive payment options.

Ecosystem: open banking payments are no longer “emerging”, they are becoming a trusted part of how money moves.

Chart: Monthly payments in 2025

API Calls: High Volumes and a Gradually Shifting Mix

The ecosystem recorded 24.0 billion successful API calls in 2025, up 27% on 2024. Account information service (AIS) remained dominant, making up roughly four out of every five calls.

But beneath the surface, Payment information service (PIS) grew, by 53%, more than double the growth rate of AIS (+24%). This signals an evolving pattern: as data access continues to provide the foundation for many services, it is increasingly fuelling a rise in payments-driven interactions across the ecosystem.

Monthly API usage rose steadily, reflecting broadening adoption across personal finance apps, lending journeys and affordability tools, small business services and more.

Why this matters

Banks: Sustained API demand highlights the need for operating models built around reliability, investment in performance, and predictable scaling.

Fintechs: Strong PIS growth signals an expanding market for payment innovation.

Policy & Regulators: The data reflects a maturing, widely used national framework underpinned by consistent implementation across providers.

Ecosystem: APIs are being consumed at scale and increasingly underpin everyday digital services.

Chart: Monthly successful API calls (2025)

User Connections: Growing Usage Across the Ecosystem

By December 2025, open banking reached 16.5 million user connections*, a 36% increase over the previous year (AIS: +35%, PIS: +36%).

Growth maintained consistent throughout the year, suggesting consumers and businesses increasingly see open banking as a safe, reliable mechanism for sharing financial data and initiating payments.
Note: User connections are counted per bank brand and are not deduplicated across brands

Note: User connections are counted per bank brand and are not deduplicated across brands

Why this matters

Banks: A signal that customers are engaging more frequently with open‑banking‑enabled journeys across products and channels.

Fintechs: A growing addressable market for data‑driven and payment-driven financial services.

Policy & Regulators: Indicates sustained adoption across the ecosystem and competitive environment shaped by real world usage.

Ecosystem: Open banking is now a familiar part of everyday digital life.

Chart: Monthly user connections (2025)

Reliability & Performance: Quiet, Consistent Stability

Despite significant growth in usage, performance remained strong throughout 2025.
Weighted availability, a measure of “up-time”, stayed above 99.50% every month in 2025, showing consistently strong performance across the parts of the system that people and businesses use most often.

Unweighted availability dipped below that level in four months, but this measure treats every part of the system the same, including those that are rarely used. As a result, a small issue in a low‑use area can make the unweighted score appear lower, even if most customers wouldn’t notice any impact.
In plain English:

Unweighted availability counts everything equally, so problems in little‑used areas can drag the score down.

Weighted availability focuses on the areas that matter most in everyday use, giving a clearer picture of real‑world performance.

Put simply: if something rarely used slows down or goes offline, the unweighted score can drop sharply, but the weighted score stays steady because the high‑use parts of the system are still performing well.

Average response times also improved to 324ms, meaning systems responded more quickly despite rising demand.

Why this matters

Banks: High weighted availability underscores strong operational performance and the importance of continual improvement in the most frequently used journeys.

Fintechs: Steady, predictable infrastructure is enabling more ambitious propositions at scale.

Policy & Regulators: Reliability remained high even as volumes grew, demonstrating sector‑wide commitment to maintaining consistency across implementations.

Ecosystem: Open banking increasingly resembles other essential digital services; dependable and always on.

Chart: Weighted availability (2025)

Average response times ended the year at 324ms, the fastest recorded so far.

Chart: Average response times (2025)

Looking ahead to 2026

2025 marked a transition: open banking became a more established, reliable part of the UK’s financial landscape. With usage growing, payments accelerating, VRP expanding, and performance strengthening, the groundwork is now laid for the next phase, including broader smart data reforms and wider industry collaboration.

OBL will continue working closely with banks, fintechs, policymakers and the wider financial community to set the standard for the safe, consistent evolution of open banking in line with the needs of consumers and businesses.

*Open Banking Limited is unable to identify individuals consuming services through more than one brand. Reporting therefore represents the number of user connections with the brands that submit data, rather than individual users. User connection volumes are not deduplicated across brands.

Note: All figures referenced in this article are from MI reported to OBL by the 20 CMA9 brands. Non-CMA9 brands are not included in these figures.

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