UK’s Open Banking Chief Calls on Regulators to Streamline, Accelerate the Technology 

The leader of United Kingdom’s open banking organization has called on regulators to accelerate debut of the technology.

Charlotte Crosswell, chair of the Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE), told City A.M. that simplifying regulations should be a priority.

“It’s not just about open banking now, it’s really becoming about where this technology sits and where its natural home is,” she told the news outlet. “We have got to work out who’s going to take it forward, and how many regulators are going to be involved and who’s going to set the policy going forward.”

OBIE was created by the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to deliver the application programming interfaces, data and security infrastructures for developers to harness technology.

Introduced in 2018, open banking promises to free data sharing in banking. It has been advocated by FinTechs who say it is essential to drive innovation in financial services. It is designed to share bank and credit card transaction data with third parties and ease bank-to-bank payments.

Crosswell says open banking is the gateway in what is expected to be a major overhaul of the financial system. Open banking allows firms to transfer data, with client’s permission, and easily integrate tools and services.

In an interview with PYMNTS, Lisa Kimball, senior vice president for Open Banking at Finicity, a Mastercard company that helps customers make smarter financial decisions through safe access to data, said the company has seen an acceleration in consumer’s demand for instant everything. As a result, she said, managing money should also be convenient.

Read more: Security, Trust Key to Consumer Adoption of Open Banking

Consumers don’t want to go to a branch or to be limited by business hours for a call center to transact and manage their money, she said. Digital channels offering them a way to manage their accounts anytime, anywhere.