Revolut Starts Open Banking Service For UK Customers

Revolut has announced a new Open Banking feature that will allow customers to access all their bank accounts on a single app. The move will make everything easier and more efficient in dealing with people’s finances, according to a press release.

For example, the new feature will make it easier for customers to track spending across all their accounts, and allow them a way to budget if they choose. The press release promises that the service is “automatic and secure.”

This is a change from the current process, in which customers’ information — like bank account numbers, balances and transactions — is all separate if they have more than one account. That method produces a reduced scope of their total finances, as they must constantly switch between apps.

Revolut will partner with TrueLayer, a leading provider of financial application programming interfaces (APIs), which will work to make sure customers’ data is secure. With APIs, bank customers can easily share banking data without having to give the passwords to their accounts.

The service was approved by the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority to work as a service provider for bank accounts. If a customer has access to their external bank app, Revolut will allow them to communicate with that app before going forward with other activities. If the customer doesn’t have access to their external account, then they must log in via their bank’s website instead. Revolut does not have access to the customer’s login information during any part of the process.

Open Banking has been sweeping the world as of late, with Australia and Singapore both looking at models to implement after the success of GDPR and PSD2 in Europe. However, the spread of the format has faced challenges in logistics, due to concerns about security, fraud and infrastructure costs.