Open Banking Surpasses One Billion Payments and 100 Billion API Calls

Payments
28.07.2026 09:16 am

The UK's Open Banking ecosystem has reached two landmark milestones, with more than one billion Open Banking payments and 100 billion API calls now recorded across the CMA9 banks since the launch of Open Banking more than eight years ago.

A defining moment in the evolution of Open Banking in the UK, these milestones demonstrate how the initiative has become an integral part of the UK's financial infrastructure, enabling millions of consumers and businesses to access innovative financial services, make account-to-account payments, and manage their finances more effectively.

The latest figures demonstrate that adoption continues to strengthen. During June, the ecosystem recorded 2.81 billion API calls, an increase of 4.4% month on month and the highest monthly volume recorded to date, reflecting sustained demand for Open Banking-powered services.

Open Banking payments remained resilient at 40.16 million during June. While Single Domestic Payments declined by 1.2%, continued growth of Variable Recurring Payments (VRPs) which increased by 6.7% month on month, helped maintain overall payment volumes and highlighted a growing area of innovation.

The latest performance data also demonstrated continued operational strength across the ecosystem. Average response times, the time it takes for a provider to respond to a payment request, improved to 349ms, 50ms faster than the previous reporting period, reflecting ongoing optimisation and performance improvements by ecosystem participants.

Henk Van Hulle, CEO of Open Banking Limited, said:

"These milestones reinforce the UK's position as a global leader in Open Banking and demonstrate an ecosystem that continues to scale in both volume and capability. As adoption increases and new use cases emerge, Open Banking will play an increasingly vital role in supporting competition, innovation and growth across the UK's financial services landscape.

"As we look ahead, our focus remains on building on these achievements. By continuing to strengthen resilience, performance and innovation, we can unlock even greater value for consumers, businesses and the wider economy, while supporting the next phase of the UK's Open Banking and Open Finance journey."AccountsIQ, the leading cloud accounting software for mid-market businesses, has partnered with Paraglide to automate collections for its customers with AI agents. The partnership gives finance teams a way to cut Days Sales Outstanding (DSO), while automating the everyday back-and-forth of billing enquiries.

Paraglide is an AI-native accounts receivable platform that handles collections conversations and billing enquiries for AccountsIQ customers, reducing DSO by an average of 34%.

Its billing support agent will respond to customer enquiries within existing email threads, pulling data directly from AccountsIQ, and its collections agent will send personalised payment reminders and follow-ups based on account behaviour and overdue status.

Both agents escalate to an accounts receivable (AR) team when they detect issues that require human judgement, and they hand off with a complete conversation history.

Darren Cran, CEO of AccountsIQ, said: "With Paraglide now integrated into AccountsIQ, we've closed the loop on AR. Our platform gives finance teams one consistent view of receivables across every entity in the group. Paraglide takes it from there, running the AI-driven conversations that actually get invoices paid, from partial payments through to disputed line items and multi-invoice queries.

"Paraglide connects straight into our customers' billing data and their team's inbox, deploying AI agents that chase outstanding invoices by email and handle whatever comes back, replies, queries and pushback alike. The finance team keeps full visibility throughout, and anything that needs a human call, a dispute, a payment plan, gets flagged and handed off immediately rather than left for the agent to guess at."

With AccountsIQ and Paraglide, finance teams can expect:

Lower DSO: Collections workflows operate consistently, without missed follow-ups. Payment blockers are resolved quickly, and finance teams see changes within the first two weeks of deployment.

Significant time savings: AI agents handle between 40% and 90% of routine billing enquiries, including invoice requests, payment confirmations, PO collection, and basic follow-ups, freeing up finance teams to focus on strategic collections, credit management, and accounts that require human attention.

Reduced bad debt: Tailored follow-ups and early intervention prevent invoices from going stale, helping teams recover payments before they become write-offs.

Seamless data flow: All data syncs back into the AccountsIQ platform, including promise-to-pay dates, updated contact information, conversation history, and payment blockers, giving AR teams full visibility.

Personalised support at scale: Every customer receives accurate, contextual, and timely responses in their preferred language, which is valuable for customers managing multi-entity, multi-currency operations across different geographies.

Rasmus Areskoug, CEO at Paraglide, added, “The integration of our AI agents will extend AccountsIQ’s platform and support its customers with added automation. Our collections agent adapts its approach based on account behaviour and ensures messages reach the right stakeholders, handling collections outreach systematically across a client's entire customer base. 

“Moreover, our billing support agent goes further in capturing promise-to-pay commitments, collects missing PO numbers, and syncs updated billing information back into a client's records. This includes answering balance enquiries using AccountsIQ data and escalating complex situations to AR teams with full context.”