Barclays’ Jason Turner has suggested that to get to Open Banking 2.0 in the UK, the industry and regulator should learn lessons from the work underway to develop variable recurring payments (VRPs) and explore how it might apply to other data and payments use cases.
Turner, who is director, Open Banking and digital platforms at Barclays, was speaking on a panel on the Main Stage at Open Banking Expo UK & Europe on 21 October, in a session titled ‘Open Banking 2.0: Rewiring the model for real-world scale’.
He told moderator David Parker, director at Polymath Consulting, that the progress made over the past eight to 10 years, largely driven by standards and regulation, can be considered Open Banking 1.0.
Jason Turner, director, Open Banking & digital platforms, Barclays
“We need to get to maturity now – and what happens when you’ve matured? As we mature, we stand on our own two feet. We become financially independent, and that’s the step for the ecosystem to take. And this period that we’re in now is perhaps the challenging adolescent period, while we learn what that future looks like for the ecosystem,” Turner said.
When asked by Parker what are the “North Stars” the ecosystem should be aiming for, Turner told him that the ecosystem needs to “finish what has already been started”.
“I think over this last year particularly, since we’ve had further clarity from the regulators, we have made more progress in the past six to 12 months,” he explained.
Turner added that there are lessons the industry is learning from establishing the TMO – the Transitional MLA Operator.
“That cookie-cutter approach will allow us to learn as we look at things like Open Finance or point of sale – whatever the use case happens to be – we can really pick up the lessons from that, [and] potentially move faster going forwards.”
Turner spoke on the panel alongside Luke Ryder, standards, strategic policy and public affairs director at Open Banking Limited, Pavle Avramovic, head of market and infrastructure observatory at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, and Bhaswant Gandham, customer journey manager (Open Banking payments) at NatWest.
In his concluding comments, Turner told attendees: “I think the TMO work has been brilliant. Industry’s come together in a way like never before. The regulators have supported in giving us a target – they’re giving us guardrails as we ask for them but they’re letting industry get on with it themselves and, as I say, it would be a shame to waste that blueprint that we’re designing there.”
Further reading: Industry leaders debate commercials, VRP, and the roadmap to 2026 at OBExpo UK & Europe
