Financial regulators in the UK have laid out their plans for the future of open banking.
The Joint Regulatory Oversight Committee (JROC), co-chaired by the FCA and the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR), say the measures will bring "opportunities for new products and services, allowing consumers and businesses to share data and make payments in more convenient and efficient ways".
The JROC also sets out its vision for a new entity to replace the Open Banking Implementation Entity in guiding the future roadmap and the principles that will underpin a long-term regulatory framework, which the Government is intending to legislate for.
The report provides a brief outline of JROC's objectives in creating the new entity: "The future entity will adhere to high standards of corporate governance, have a wide membership base underpinned by broad-based, proportionate funding and liability arrangements and ensure the needs of end users (i.e., consumers and businesses) are represented in its decision making.
"To ensure it can do this effectively, we will work with open banking participants over the next few months to undertake further analysis of the optimal structure, governance and funding of the future entity and the OBIE’s transition to it."
A detailed plan will be delivered in Q4 2023.
The future framework coalesces around five key themes and priorities for the next two years. These include levelling up availability and performance, mitigating the risks of financial crime, consumer protection, improved information flows to third party providers and end users, and the promotion of additional services, using non-sweeping variable recurring payments (VRP) as a pilot.
The latter point is seen as a key undertaking for expanding the potential use cases for open banking. Todd Clyde, chief executive of Token, comments: "We are particularly pleased to see regulators recognise the potential of non-sweeping Variable Recurring Payments (VRPs) in their roadmap for open banking. VRPs are key to unlocking richer open banking use cases, such as one-click e-commerce payments and subscription payments."
To deflect from inevitable criticism about the delays in completing the transition to the future oversight entity, the JROC says the Open Banking Implementation Entity will in the interim undertake measures to improve data collection around fraud figures and API availability with immediate effect.
In delivering the report, the co-chairs of the committee, PSR’s managing director, Chris Hemsley, and FCA’s executive director, consumers and competition, Sheldon Mills say: "Only through effective collaboration can we deliver on our ambition and develop open banking in a way that promotes continued innovation and competition, for the benefit of consumers, businesses, and the wider economy."