The number of people actively using open banking in the UK has reached five million.

These figures are based on data provided during January 2022 by the CMA9, the nine banks and building societies mandated under the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) Order to implement open banking in the UK.

When the standards turned four in January this year, 4.5m regular users, breaking down to 3.9m consumers and 600,000 small businesses, were using them. In December 2020, the number of adopters was 2.8m.

Furthermore, over 26.6m open banking payments had been made by the end of 2021, 500% more than the same period a year previous.

In addition, the speed at which the standards are being adopted is growing. It took 10 months to grow the number of users from 1m to 2m in 2020. However, it took just four months to grow from 4m to more than 5m.

Contributing to the the recent growth was the increase in number of payments being delivered through open banking – nearly 625,000 additional payments in January 2022 compared with December 2021.

A significant factor in this payments growth was HMRC’s incorporation of a ‘pay by bank‘ option into its annual self-assessment process, which took the total number of payments made via open banking to 3.86m in January 2022. This is an increase of 19.3% on December 2021.

Trustee of the Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE) Charlotte Crosswell said: “Open banking was predicated on delivering increased competition and providing consumers and small businesses with new and innovative solutions. It is therefore extremely encouraging to see that more than 5 million active users are now leveraging the benefits of open banking.

“This accelerated growth strongly represents a world-leading and thriving ecosystem bringing an ever-increasing range of real-world solutions, that in turn is driving mass user adoption.

“As open banking technology embeds and becomes easier to use, we look forward to seeing this momentum continue.”

Open banking came into force with the introduction of the Payments Services Directive 2 (PSD2) on January 13th, 2018. This made the standards a regulatory requirement in the UK.

The legislation meant that third parties could access bank infrastructure, paving the way for a wider variety of services and products.

PSD2 aimed to make electronic payments more secure across Europe, in turn helping the banking industry adopt new technology, boosting innovation and protecting consumers.

Newly appointed CEO of the OBIE, Henk Van Hulle, said: “What a great time to be joining the OBIE! This is great news for the open banking community. I am delighted to see such accelerated growth in end-user adoption rates.

“This demonstrates that the tremendous efforts of everyone across the whole ecosystem continue to bear fruit. It also shows what a superb job the team at the OBIE are doing in building and running the supporting infrastructure.”

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Additional research from last year noted that 74% of merchants are planning on adopting open banking standards. According it, more merchants were being tempted to utilise the standards to offer instant bank transfers.

The growing customer base is good news for the Scottish fintech ecosystem, which features numerous companies using the standards.

These companies include OneBanks which allows users to consolidate and access their bank accounts from one place.

Nude meanwhile, offers a savings account, financial coach and app designed to help savers better understand their finances and the home-buying process.

Sustainably lets its users round up cashless transactions and donate the excess to charity.

David Beardmore, Ecosystem Development Director at the OBIE, said that as well as increased adoption, the numbers provide a clear demonstration that open banking is here to stay.

“This is positive news for all involved in open banking – for those entrepreneurs who have built fintech businesses based on the foundations of open banking, for the investment community funding the continued expansion of products and services, and for government as it continues to examine how best to extend open banking functionality into other areas of the economy.”

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