Seven Open Banking Trends Reshaping Global Finance in 2026
Open banking has crossed the threshold from regulatory experiment to financial mainstream. In the UK, one in every 13 Faster Payments now travels through an open banking channel. The EU has made instant payments a default infrastructure standard. Global open banking API calls are projected to grow from 137 billion in 2025 to over 720 billion by 2029. Here are the seven trends driving that transformation.
1. From Early Adopters to Mass Market
Open banking has reached scale, particularly in the UK, where 18.4% of digitally active consumers and small businesses now use open banking services - up from roughly 11% in mid-2023. By year-end 2025, the UK recorded over 16.5 million user connections and 351 million open banking payments, representing 70% year-on-year growth. What began as an infrastructure mandate is now a consumer-facing product millions choose by preference.
2. EU Instant Payments: From Optional to Mandatory
The EU's Instant Payments Regulation came into full effect by late 2025, requiring all eurozone banks to offer instant euro settlement as a standard feature rather than a chargeable add-on. This regulatory floor-raising creates the infrastructure foundation for account-to-account (A2A) payments to compete directly with card networks at scale across Europe.
3. Commercial VRPs Expanding Beyond Sweeping
Variable Recurring Payments (VRPs) allow customers to authorize multiple future payments within preset limits. Originally confined to account sweeping, commercial VRPs are expanding into utilities, financial services, and e-commerce subscription use cases in 2026 - offering a consent-based, programmable alternative to direct debit with real-time cancellation rights for consumers.
4. Wero and the European Payment Sovereignty Play
Wero, the bank-linked digital wallet developed by the European Payments Initiative, reached 45 million users by late 2025. As local payment schemes including iDEAL and Payconiq integrate into the Wero model, Europe is assembling an independent payment infrastructure - a domestic alternative to Visa, Mastercard, and Big Tech wallets. This is arguably the most consequential strategic development in European payments in a decade.
5. PSD3 and PSR: Building the Regulatory Foundation
The EU's Payment Services Regulation (PSR) and Payment Services Directive 3 (PSD3) center on three priorities: consistent API performance standards across markets, stronger fraud liability and prevention frameworks, and clearer consumer consent architecture. When finalized, these frameworks will lower third-party provider integration costs and create conditions for sustained market competition in open banking services.
6. Account Information Services: Data Infrastructure Beyond Payments
Approximately 80% of open banking API traffic relates to Account Information Services - read-only access to balances and transaction histories. This data is increasingly applied beyond payment initiation: for KYC identity verification, creditworthiness assessment, age assurance, and personalized financial product matching. Open banking is evolving from a payments rail into a foundational layer of digital financial identity.
7. The Path to Open Finance
The EU's proposed Financial Data Access framework (FiDA) would extend data portability rights beyond payment accounts to savings products, investment portfolios, pensions, mortgages, and insurance policies. If enacted, FiDA would create a unified consent framework allowing consumers to authorize any third party to access their complete financial picture - the foundation for genuinely open finance.
The Flywheel
These seven trends reinforce each other: regulatory mandates raise infrastructure floors, better infrastructure drives API call volumes, higher volumes enable new product categories, and new products attract the next wave of users. For financial institutions, fintechs, and corporate treasury teams, understanding this compounding dynamic is the prerequisite for positioning correctly in the payment landscape forming right now.