New data, released by Yapily the leading Open Banking infrastructure provider to align with the Euros Championship kick-off, reveals the UK, Ireland and Germany outscore the opposition in their adoption of Open Banking in the EU Open Banking league table. 

The league table - based on data compiled in 2021 by Yapily through its EU-wide Open Banking API infrastructure and monitoring tools - reveals that while parts of the EU are making positive strides to drive Open Banking adoption and are on track to evolve into Open Finance, others are far behind and missing their scoring opportunity.

Each country has been ranked based on levels of supervision and enforcement by the member state, the presence of Open Banking from a technical standard, regulator interpretation, API standards and bank readiness, and overall product score. Yapily has also shared regulatory insight on where and how each country can positively improve their overall score and ranking.

Ranking: Selected countries from the league table and overall ranking scores against all countries. For the full league table, please see here. 

UK (1st place)

• The UK comes out on top as the leading adopter of Open Banking, with it’s clear functionality and widespread mandating of interesting features, such as Bulk Payments and Variable Recurring Payments. 

Germany (3rd place)

• Germany ranks high with its strong regulatory supervision and use of the Berlin Group’s API - the most prescriptive after UK Open Banking. However Germany has low guidance around the implementation of Open Banking and needs more support on issuing regulatory guidelines around user journeys and customer authentication.

Italy (joint 7th place)

• Italy has low supervision of Open Banking standards and a premature regulatory response. It does however use the Berlin Group standard, so its API implementation is good, but with some bespoke flows. We could see Italy move up the rankings fast by expanding their single domestic payments and going international.  

Denmark (joint 7th place)

• Denmark has good regulatory supervision with some guidance provided around implementation, but with no Open Banking regulator, they can’t currently centralise technical standards. However, with a strong appetite for Open Banking, we expect Denmark will roll out a governing body in the next few years. 

Portugal (8th place)

• Open Banking is currently one of the regulator's priorities and the industry has positively supported this development. While it’s heading in the right direction, it’s not quite there yet with its adoption. 

Iceland (11th place), Greece (12th place), and Hungary (13th place)

• Languishing at the bottom of the league table, Iceland, Greece, and Hungary don’t currently see Open Banking as a regulatory priority. To support the development of an Open Banking ecosystem, these countries should focus on opening up their markets to fintechs for disruption. Consumers need to get used to modern technologies. So, regulators need to concentrate on lowering barriers to entry. 

Open Banking usage has increased significantly since the start of the pandemic. In the UK alone, the OBIE reports that over 3 million consumers now use Open Banking-enabled products and services to improve their financial wellbeing, and more and more countries are harnessing the power of Open Banking to enable better and fairer financial services. 

But while the market has a rough idea of who is winning the metaphorical league and who is missing the net, no-one really knows what the actual picture looks like across Europe. Or what this means for the future of Open Banking adoption. Yapily’s EU Open Banking league table provides this comprehensive overview of the market.

Andria Evripidou, Policy Lead at Yapily comments on the data, “The league table demonstrates the positive impact Open Banking adoption has across markets and highlights that the ecosystem as a whole, is on the right path to offering fairer financial services for everyone. 

“While some countries have a bigger presence, over the next few years, we will start to see standardised technical requirements that map customer journeys across all countries and better educate industries on Open Banking, as well as the direction of the ecosystem.

“Ultimately, all countries are working towards a common goal - to evolve with Open Finance - and at Yapily, we’re excited to watch the rest of Europe dive forward with this innovation.”