Case studies

How OneID’s open banking-powered identity verification services help boost productivity for small businesses

04 June 2025

OneID® is a UK-based identity provider which uses open banking data to verify the identity and age of individuals. It works with businesses and public sector organisations to enable them to quickly and accurately identify the people and firms that they are dealing with.

Open banking’s ability to securely authenticate a customer and enable the sharing of account information, with the user’s consent, unlocks new identity verification capabilities, creating a fast, seamless, and secure end-to-end digital process that can speed up a variety of day-to-day business tasks. These include age verification, know-your-customer (KYC) and Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks, customer retention, compliance management and more.

This can help the UK’s 5.5 million small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) cut costs, reduce customer drop-off in digital journeys, and combat fraud. All of which, in turn, can boost productivity.

“By using open banking data, we can eliminate much of the paperwork in previously manual processes, as well as increase the speed and accuracy of identity verification. This can free up valuable time for SMEs, enabling them to focus on their core business, driving efficiencies, helping to reduce fraud, and supporting wider economic growth.”

Paula Sussex, CEO, OneID

Often operating with limited staff numbers, eliminating unnecessary tasks using open banking services to streamline how they manage money and make account-to-account payments can save valuable effort. In some cases, this can help businesses re-gain around 150 hours on operational administration, and cut payment processing costs by:

  • reducing manual input with automated sharing of bank data
  • minimising errors with near real-time, secure access to verified banking data
  • speeding up transactions with account-to-account payments that settle almost instantly
  • supporting improved financial decision-making with access to accurate financial data, like account balances and interest rates.

How OneID works for user verification

Unlike traditional identity verification methods that rely on document or face scans, OneID reuses the data that has already been stringently verified by banks. The API uses the open banking rails to securely share this information instantly with the requesting business.

OneID only shares the information that is required for the verification. If the business sells an age-restricted product, the verification will only check whether the individual is over 18. No other details, such as name or address, are shared. The data sets a business gets access to can be configured depending on the specific use case and compliance requirements. This approach not only preserves the end-user’s privacy but also protects businesses from the increased GDPR risk of collecting unnecessary personal data.

An open banking-powered ID service is quick and easy:

  1. A customer clicks the OneID button on a business website.
  2. They consent to share bank-verified data with the business.
  3. They authenticate using their bank login.
  4. OneID shares the verified identity data securely and in real-time.

This avoids SMEs having to find and scan information manually, reducing processing time. It can also help reduce the fraud associated with creating accounts from scanned documents which can’t be verified in the same way as data provided directly via banks.

The process is:

How smarter ID verification helps small businesses

This frictionless and document-free flow can ease practical problems for businesses.

  1. Simplifying KYC checks to double onboarding rates for a financial services firm: Friction during onboarding – document scanning, typing out details – causes 68% users to drop out of financial services journeys. Financial services firm, Anna Money, used OneID to eliminate the friction of uploading, and reduced drop-out rates by 50%.

  2. Speeding up beneficiary set-up and payments for a national farming charity; 34% of SME decision-makers have seen deepfakes being used to defraud them. A major UK farmers’ charity used OneID to streamline the set-up and minimise the possibility of fraud from its ‘Return to School’ and ‘Winter Fuel’ grants campaigns. The OneID API auto-populated bank-verified details of the beneficiary, with their consent, such as name, address and account number and sort code. This greatly reduced the possibility of sending payments to the wrong account or any deep-fake attacks.

  3. Improving customer data accuracy for a football club; Millwall FC set up a single sign-on for its fans, streamlining how they log in and engage with the club. This authentication means fans don’t have to remember passwords or create duplicate accounts, helping Millwall to build accurate fan data, giving the club a single view of their members. This has increased engagement, contributing to more sold-out matches than in the past 60 years.
  • Implementing age assurance to make a dating app compliant with the Online Safety Act; the Sizzl dating app prioritises safety for its members, and implemented age assurance for its dating app before the Online Safety Act came into effect.  

Driving the UK’s digital-first economy

Open banking data is paving the way for a growing range of digital verification services, enabling individuals as well as businesses to securely prove their identities to access goods and services, and will play an increasing role in key economic sectors. 

Paula Sussex concludes: “A recent report from EY and the City of London Corporation, Securing growth: the digital verification opportunity, highlighted that digital verification could unlock £1.8 billion in economic value by 2031, and reduce fraud losses by £3 billion.

“As the UK embraces a digital-first economy, identity verification solutions that enhance security without disrupting customer journeys will be critical. With over 13 million people and UK businesses benefiting from open banking, we are enabling companies to tap into this powerful identity ecosystem, helping to reduce fraud, speeding up onboarding and driving efficiencies.”

Notes to editors

Open Banking Limited does not endorse any of the products or companies mentioned here.

If you would like to share your organisation’s experience of open banking, please email us at press@openbanking.org.uk. 

If you would like to talk to one of our team about how open banking could help your business, please email us at enquiries@openbanking.org.uk.