UK Antitrust Watchdog Orders Barclays To Correct Breaches

The United Kingdom’s banking regulator has ruled that Barclays Bank UK Plc has failed to make available accurate, comprehensive and timely information on its products and services through its Open Banking application programming interfaces (APIs).

In a letter to Barclays dated Monday (March 21), the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) wrote the London-based financial services giant violated the corrective order more than a dozen times.

The Open Banking provisions of the measure require the largest Great Britain and Northern Ireland lenders to make their data continuously available through Open Banking APIs.

“This allows third-party app and website providers to provide personalized services and information to make it easy for people and business to, for example, find out which bank account and lending products are best for them,” Dipesh Shah, CMA director, remedies, business and financial analysis, wrote.

CMA cited Barclays for over-stating the number of ATMs by 200 between April 2021 and July 15; failing to list two branches and 47 ATMs between April 2021 and July 7; 2021; under-reporting overdraft fees between 1 Nov., 2018, and 11 Aug., 2021; and other errors.

“Failure to make continuously available accurate, comprehensive and up to date information on products and services can mean that consumers take wrong decisions, and they may therefore choose financial products or services which are not best suited to their needs,” the three-page letter said.

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