The UK authorities has begun its seek for an IT provider to assist its plan to construct open banking capabilities into its cost platform.
The Authorities Digital Service (GDS) is on the lookout for a tech provider to begin work in July this 12 months, in a three-year contract price £49m.
The GDS, which is a part of the Cupboard Workplace, stated it needs a cost service supplier “to underpin the Gov.uk Pay platform, particularly for processing credit score and debit card funds and pay by financial institution (open banking) funds”.
Its search contains inviting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to bid for the multimillion-pound contract. Open banking specialisation is discovered within the fintech sector, which incorporates a lot of startup SMEs.
The Gov.uk Pay platform permits central authorities, native authorities, police forces and the NHS to take funds for his or her companies digitally, lowering monetary processes and the executive burden.
In response to the federal government, Gov.uk Pay processed over 94 million transactions since its launch in September 2016, price about £6bn.
“Gov.uk Pay is a typical instrument that’s constructed as soon as and used many occasions by greater than 1,000 totally different public sector companies, saving the general public sector time, cash and lowering duplication of effort,” the federal government stated.
It additionally affords a constant, trusted and accessible consumer expertise, making it fast and straightforward for residents to pay for public sector companies. Pay has achieved vital realised advantages, saving the general public sector cash, and the contract contains the choice for 2 year-long extensions.
By means of software programming interfaces (APIs), open banking permits banking particulars to be shared by shoppers with third-party apps and web sites if permission is granted.
In 2018, UK banks had been required to implement the Competitors and Markets Authority open banking rules, which led to the event of APIs in banking to offer shoppers extra management over their accounts.
The tip purpose was to extend competitors in a sector dominated by huge monetary companies corporations. Buyer banking information is shared by the business by way of APIs, with buyer permission, enabling companies to supply tailor-made merchandise.
In response to latest figures from Open Banking Restricted (OBL), the implementation authority for open banking, there are actually about 11.7 million lively customers of open banking-enabled merchandise within the UK, and over 22.1 million open banking funds are made month-to-month.
The OBL stated there was a complete of 400 million profitable open banking funds made since 2018, and added that there’s an open banking ecosystem within the UK price £4bn to the economic system.
In January, Marion King, chair and trustee on the OBL, stated: “As we replicate on the final seven years, we needs to be collectively pleased with the monetary innovation and the advantages open banking delivers to shoppers and companies, in addition to the broader economic system. We’re at a pivotal stage within the evolution of open banking, with laws and regulation coming ahead that won’t solely put it on a commercially sustainable footing match for the long run, but additionally transfer us in direction of open finance and different good information schemes.”