Santander has partnered with A2A account-to-account payment infrastructure provider Token.io to boost the bank’s Open Banking capabilities in the UK.

Headquartered in London with operations in Berlin and San Francisco, Token.io processes over 30 million payments annually for a blue-chip base of over 80 industry partners, with its current client base including HSBC, Mastercard, and BNP Paribas.

Santander’s chief payment officer Paul Horlock and Token.io’s chief executive officer Todd Clyde announced the collaboration during the opening keynote at the Open Banking Expo in London on Tuesday.

As part of the move, the bank, which serves over 14 million customers in the UK, aims to use Token.io’s infrastructure to offer payments directly from an external bank account as a credit card repayment option.

By using direct account-to-account payment for card repayments, the bank aims to provide an improved customer experience that is more efficient than direct debit or manual bank transfer.

Santander added that by using the technology it will be able to eradicate error-prone manual data entry, with the platform supporting biometric strong customer authentication (SCA) for payments made on a mobile device, for a more secure payment experience.

The bank also confirmed plans to implement Token.io's infrastructure to further modernise real-time money movement for its retail banking clients.

Santander emphasised the importance of financial institutions embracing instant payments and Open Banking, citing data from Capgemini’s world payments report which finds that Open Banking technologies could potentially offset 15-25 per cent of future card transactions volume growth.

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