Feature: What’s in store for the UK and European ecosystem in 2026?

In 2025, the Open Banking, Open Finance and payments ecosystem did not stand still. Adoption increased, payments regulation came into force, and Open Finance use cases continued to emerge.

Yet, at Open Banking Expo UK & Europe held in London in October, many panel debates heard speakers call for more and faster progress, whether that was around getting commercial variable recurring payments over the line, or taking the lessons learned from Open Banking and applying these to other Smart Data schemes.

So, will 2026 herald more of the same for Open Banking, Open Finance and payments in the UK and Europe, or can the ecosystem look forward to further progress and innovation?

Open Banking in the UK

The number of Open Banking users in the UK continued to grow in 2025, with 15.16 million consumers and businesses using Open Banking-driven services, or nearly one in three adults, according to official data for July published by Open Banking Limited (OBL).

The ecosystem is keen to build on that momentum as it marks the 8th anniversary of Open Banking’s implementation.

Henk van Hulle, chief executive officer of OBL, observes: “As Open Banking turns eight this January, it’s clear the story has moved from mandate to real momentum.

“Our trust framework is now the backbone of a vibrant retail banking ecosystem, and we’ll continue focusing on what matters most: setting standards, scaling adoption responsibly, giving consumers choice, and helping the UK economy to thrive.”

Payments remained the main use case and the biggest driver of adoption. This seems unlikely to change, particularly with the launch of the UK Payments Initiative (UKPI), which will see the first commercial variable recurring payments early this year.

Melanie Lazarus, ecosystem engagement director at OBL, says the significant adoption levels seen in 2025 mean that she expects Open Banking “to continue edging towards mainstream usage” this year.

“Based on the trends we’ve seen, I’m confident that payments will keep setting the pace in 2026, with new use cases too,” she adds.

Marie Walker, open futurist at Raidiam, called the eight-year anniversary of Open Banking in the UK and Europe “a milestone accompanied by notable consolidation as players jostle for scale and strategic position”.

Among the deals that made the headlines in 2025 were European Pay by Bank network TrueLayer announcing it will acquire Zimpler.

Francesco Simoneschi, co-founder and chief executive officer of TrueLayer, observes that consolidation is transforming the account-to-account ecosystem.

“Our acquisition of Zimpler unites TrueLayer’s pan-European reach with deep Nordic expertise and puts us in pole position to accelerate the move away from card infrastructure,” he says.

Rounding out the year was the news that Mollie, a European financial services provider, has agreed to acquire bank payment company GoCardless.

Commercial VRP: ‘A watershed moment’

It was not just acquisitions making the news, though.

In December last year, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) announced that the UKPI – formed of 31 Open Banking and payments organisations – would be established before the end of the year.

Among the 31 firms that committed earlier in 2025 to fund the creation of the new company and take forward the initial phase of commercial VRPs are Acquired.com, GoCardless, Nationwide, Mastercard Open Banking Services UK, Token.io, obconnect, NatWest Group, Moneyhub, Plaid, Yapily and TrueLayer.

“The newly-launched UKPI – built on significant industry collaboration in 2025 – will enable the first live variable recurring payment transactions at scale in Q1 2026, opening an entirely new payment paradigm for consumers and businesses alike,” says Raidiam’s Walker.

“This represents a watershed moment for Open Banking’s real-world economic impact beyond the compliance era.”

Tom Burton, director of external affairs and public policy at GoCardless, says: “We’ve been working for many years – in close collaboration with the rest of the industry, regulators and the government – to make sure recurring Pay by Bank is something payers and our businesses can benefit from.”

He adds: “We’ll start to see transactions emerge slowly at first, before building momentum throughout the rest of the year.”

For OBL’s Lazarus, launching the UK’s first commercial VRP scheme was “a huge milestone for the industry”.

“My biggest takeaway from 2025? When we choose to work together as an ecosystem, we can achieve groundbreaking things. I’m excited to keep that spirit up in the year ahead,” she notes.

Smart Data – a long-term play

In the UK, the Data Use and Access Bill received Royal Assent in 2025, paving the way for new Smart Data schemes in addition to Open Banking, covering sectors such as transport and energy. The government has confirmed that these new schemes are expected to generate approximately £10 billion towards the UK economy over 10 years.

In January 2025, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero launched a call for evidence on developing a Smart Data scheme in the energy sector, which received 58 responses from a range of stakeholders. DESNZ reported that 76% support the development of an energy Smart Data scheme.

Last year, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology also ran a call for evidence, seeking views on whether and how to introduce a Smart Data scheme in digital markets.

Raidiam’s Walker believes that 2026 is “a pivotal inflection point” for the UK’s Smart Data economy.

“The year ahead will see significant steps forward across multiple fronts. Working groups, coalitions, proofs of concept and pilot schemes are actively shaping thinking on the technical, regulatory, and architecture for future deployment,” explains Walker.

“The interoperability agenda – both within and across sectors and schemes – will be critical to realising the full potential of this ecosystem. In parallel, machine-to-machine consent frameworks and robust trust layers for agentic AI interactions will likely move from theoretical discussion into concrete implementation requirements.”

However, she emphasises that rather than being the year when large-scale Smart Data schemes launch, 2026 will be about “exploration, collaboration, and recommendations”.

UK and Europe: ‘Embrace the data opportunity’

While the prospect of Smart Data schemes is exciting, there remains plenty of untapped potential in Open Finance, in areas including pensions, mortgages and investment.

With many regions moving ahead with Open Finance use cases, including in Brazil which has implemented Open Insurance, the UK and Europe may risk falling behind.

Lauren Jones, Open Banking lead at Paylume, points out that with an agreement being reached on PSD3 and the Payment Services Regulation in the EU, and the UK having the legislative framework in place to advance work on Open Banking and Open Finance more broadly, banks need to see these “as a strategic opportunity, instead of a box-ticking exercise”.

“The latter has been the case for Europe and often meant that the competitive and commercial benefits haven’t been realised,” she says.

The EU acknowledged that Open Finance solutions in areas beyond payments have been developing “at a slower pace in absence of clear rules of the game”. In response, it established a framework for Financial Data Access, known as FiDA.

Jones notes: “As we move further towards FiDA in Europe, banks need to shift towards becoming data consumers, so they themselves can become participants in the data economy and leverage their market position.

“Beyond Europe, we are seeing some extremely interesting distribution models for financial services utilising Open Banking, and the UK and EU need to take note.”

She calls 2026 the year that “more financial institutions embrace the data opportunity”.

“Open Data opportunities could lay the groundwork for new revenue models and unlock enhanced data sets, meaning better credit scoring and more personalised financial guidance and products for consumers. Regulation is the baseline, not the conclusion,” Jones adds.

Instant payments vs instant fraud

“Governments around the world have been on a mission to deploy real-time payments to meet demand for 24/7 resilient, mission-critical payments,” observes Barry Rodrigues, executive vice president, payments at Finastra.

He explains that more than 80 countries have deployed instant payment schemes and estimates suggest that, by 2028, one in every four payments sent globally will be real-time.

Rodrigues adds: “The benefits for customers are clear: instant payments are faster, more affordable and offer treasurers greater cash flow visibility and enhanced liquidity management.

“If banks are not already offering this capability, it needs to be a priority in the year ahead, together with ensuring they have the right capabilities in place to combat fraudulent payments in real time and comply with regulation.”

The Instant Payments Regulation came into effect in Europe in October last year. It means that “instant has become the default, rather than a premium”, according to Paylume’s co-founder and head of strategic advisory Kjeld Herreman.

But, Herreman warns that instant payments also mean instant fraud.

“2025 heralded the proliferation of Verification of Payee in Europe as a countermeasure to tackle various forms of fraud. Although banks have largely come to terms with Verification of Payee for retail customers, corporate payments, which are often exempt from strong customer authentication, remain a challenge for payment service providers,” he says.

The 2025 edition of the European Central Bank and European Banking Authority’s joint report on payment fraud revealed that the total value of fraud in the European Economic Area increased to €4.2 billion in 2024, from €3.5 billion the previous year.

The banking industry is responding to the threat by investing huge sums. A new study by Juniper Research forecasts an 85% jump in fraud detection and prevention investment by 2030, up from $21 billion in 2025 to $39 billion in 2030.

“Fraud is set to remain on the agenda in 2026, with the removal of the €100,000 limit on instant payments creating the perfect breeding ground for fraudsters to devise new attack vectors,” explains Herreman.

“Banks will need to massively invest in uplifting their fraud prevention capabilities to address these threats, as the upcoming Payment Services Regulation (PSR) will further shift liability for fraudulent payments away from payment service users and towards their providers.

“Fraud related data sharing, potentially through APIs, is something that will need to be explored by banks in order to effectively thwart fraudsters.”