Insight
Open Banking
What is it, and what does it mean for me?
Corporate Open Banking Service
Open Banking is transforming how consumers and businesses can share their financial data securely and, in turn, enabling development of innovative financial services and products. Barclays is at the forefront of supporting this industry initiative.
New data sharing and payment options
As well as using the wealth of functionality provided by Barclays Channels to access your accounts for Balance and Transaction Reporting (BTR) and make payments, you can now do so via Open Banking.
There are a growing number of Third-Party Providers (TPPs) who are regulated by National Competent Authorities (e.g. the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the UK, the Central Bank of Ireland, etc.) as Account Information Service Providers (AISPs) and Payment Initiation Service Providers (PISPs) offering you access to your accounts at Barclays and your other Banking partners across Europe. Sharing your data with TPPs presents you with new solutions and capabilities.
Open Banking explained
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The aim of Open Banking is to increase competition in the banking industry. It’s an industry-wide change that we’ve been working on with regulators, banks and registered companies in accordance with the second Payment Services Directive (PSD2).
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You can choose to share data from your accounts with regulated TPPs, and pay in new ways. You can consolidate/aggregate account information from all of your banks in one place, and make payments* through other applications and websites. Whatever you do – it’s completely your choice, and your financial data still belongs to your business/organisation.
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Throughout the year, we’ll be launching new services using Open Banking facilitated by Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). In March we will be working with TPPs, granting them access to APIs offering BTR and payment* functionality. This enables a six-month period of industry testing ahead of a full industry wide launch in September.
* BACS payment capability will be limited to single debit/single credit (i.e. not batch debit) initially and will require a separate limit to be agreed by your Relationship Team. Full BACS functionality will be included by September 2019. For more information, please contact your Relationship Team.
How will TPPs access my business/organisation's data?
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Traditionally, Businesses/Organisations who hold accounts with multiple banks have either: relied on the banks themselves to share BTR via SWIFT messages and present it through their online channels or; become SWIFT members in their own right via the SWIFT for Corporate service. Using Open Banking you instead consent to TPPs accessing your business/organisation’s accounts via APIs – that consent is authenticated via our online Channels, iPortal or Business OnLine Banking (BOLB)*, depending on which you are currently registered for.
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No, the practice of providing TPPs your login credentials so they can access our online channels on your behalf is known as screen scraping – that is not how Open Banking works.
Within your chosen TPPs application/service, you will be presented with an Open Banking consent screen that will first ask which Bank* your business/organisation holds the account(s) with that you wish to share. When you select Barclays, you will be presented with a dedicated iPortal or BOLB login page* where you will enter your current login credentials and authenticate your consent to the TPP:
- You give consent to share your data for 90 days at a time (you can later revoke this if you do not want to continue sharing data with the TPP within the 90 days)
- You consent to any payment instruction(s) you create via the TPP each time – a second User will then separately login to iPortal/BOLB to view the task list for payments against which they then need to give second approval
- If you use iPortal, you will first need to create new User Profiles to allow individual users to consent to sharing data and instructing payments via an Open Banking TPP. For details on how to do this, please visit the iPortal help pages.
*You will see more than one entry for “Barclays”. If you use iPortal, you will need to select 'Barclays International and Corporate Bank'. If you use BOLB, you will need to select 'Barclays UK'.
Will I require any additional facilities with the bank?
If you wish to use a PISP to instruct BACS payments from your accounts, you will need to contact your Relationship Director to agree a suitable settlement risk limit (this is separate from any limit in place against BACS payments instructed via Barclays’ own channels). BACS capability will also be limited to single debit/single credit (i.e. not batch debit) initially, but full functionality will be available by September.
How can Open Banking at Barclays support your business?
If you are a regulated Third Party Provider (TPP) offering Account Information Service Provider (AISP) or Payment Initiation Service Provider (PISP) functionality, you can extend your offering to Barclays corporate clients by connecting to our open banking service.
Or, if you are a Barclays client and have identified the services of a TPP that you would like to use, you can apply to have your Barclays balance and transaction information supplied to them and for Barclays to accept payment instructions initiated by your users through your TPP.
You can then:
- Access Barclays accounts and aggregate accounts across multiple banks directly through your chosen TPP’s application/solution
- Stay within your TPP’s application/system to access bank balance and transaction information or initiate a payment instead of having to log into their bank’s application/portal
- Create and approve any payment instructions via the TPP’s application/service using SWIFT 3SKey Security Tokens.
Contact us
Get in touch
To discuss your business requirements and how Barclays can support you, contact us today.