NatWest has published a new report calling for banks, FinTechs and regulators to work together to address economic barriers to the wider adoption of Open Banking.

Since its launch in 2018, Open Banking has been used by more than seven million businesses and consumers.

However, this only represents around 10 per cent of consumers and SMEs, with traditional payment options like cards or direct debits still dominating the market.

The report found several obstacles to the roll out of Open Banking, including a lack of commercial incentives to develop or enhance new use cases and poor alignment between banks on the benefits of Open Banking.

NatWest said that banks should be mandated to offer a wider set of Open Banking use cases and encouraged to expand use cases through premium APIs.

The bank also called for the development of a new multi-party system whereby the Open Banking ecosystem can be grown through the design of flexible frameworks for industry collaboration.

“This report makes it clear that banks, FinTechs and regulators need to work together to design new, flexible frameworks and commercial incentives that will support a far wider range of Open Banking use cases,” said Claire Melling, head of bank of APIs, NatWest Group. “By acting on the recommendations in this report, we can enable Open Banking to reach its full potential and, ultimately, deliver new and enhanced propositions that will improve customer choice and experience.”

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