iwoca adds Barclays and HSBC to Open Banking connections

This expands the number of Open Banking connections offered by iwoca to three, including Lloyds Bank, and will enable more than 60% of the lender’s customers to take advantage of the Open Banking service.

Open Banking is the new regulation which allows customers to give verified third-parties access to their bank data via a secure application programming interface (API). Business owners who bank with either Barclays, HSBC or Lloyds can now provide up to five years of transaction history in seconds when applying for a revolving credit facility or long-term loan from iwoca. According to the Competition & Markets Authority (CMA), these three banks combined accounted for between 50 and 80% of the market share of UK business current accounts in 2015, in the last year for which figures are available.

However, a survey of 1,000 small business owners, carried out in November on behalf of iwoca, found that almost three quarters (73%) could not correctly identify what Open Banking is. A lack of public awareness of Open Banking has been identified as an issue in the past but as the initiative approaches its first anniversary, awareness remains persistently low.

iwoca became the first business lender to connect with any of the UK’s nine largest high street banks through Open Banking when the fintech company announced a full connection to Lloyds Bank in November 2018. 

Following this announcement, iwoca will continue to work on finalising connections with the remaining six high street banks. Connections to Santander and NatWest are close to being completed. iwoca has been working closely with all nine of the banks since the initiative’s launch in January 2018.