Open Banking now live for all UK customers 🤸‍♀️

This blog post is an update of a previous post in which we asked for beta users for our Open Banking feature. Thank you to all who got involved in making it a success.

Open Banking is now live for all of our UK customers on both retail (that’s a regular everyday account) and business plans. Let us explain why this is such a big deal.

Right now, your external bank account details like account numbers, balances, transaction history, etc. sit squarely within your bank. You have no real ownership of them, and the only way to see them is through your bank’s website or app. The problem is, it’s 2020, and most of us have more than one account. Wouldn’t it be easier if you could see all of your account transactions in one place? Say, in Revolut?

That’s where Open Banking comes in. Following a successful beta test, we’ve built a system which allows you to connect your external UK bank accounts to Revolut, making it possible for you to see all of your balances and transactions in one single app. What a time-saver.

Open Banking in a nutshell 🥜

With Open Banking, you can connect your external bank accounts (and some accounts with providers who aren't banks) to Revolut and see everything in one place. This means you can see your Revolut balances and transactions alongside your external bank account transactions directly in Revolut, and set budgeting controls for both.

You can access Open Banking right now by going to Dashboard > Open Banking. You’ll need to update to the latest version of the app first.

Open Banking in more detail 🔍

Think of Open Banking as a marriage between regulations and some pretty clever systems. The goal of Open Banking is to give you more control over your bank account. Specifically, to give you the ability to share your transaction data with other banks and third parties, in ways that benefit you.

What sort of ways? Take Revolut, for example. Our goal has always been to help you manage your financial life and a huge part of that comes down to convenience. Having to switch between different apps to view your balances, transactions and budgeting, is inconvenient.

With Open Banking, you’re able to track your Revolut transactions and (for example) your HSBC and Barclays transactions, all from within Revolut.

How it works: It’s all about the API 🤖

Open Banking relies on something called an API. Short for Application Programming Interface, APIs make it possible for the software at one company to access information from the software at another company. When you sign into any website using your Google account, the Google Authentication API helps you login securely.

Revolut has proudly been authorised by the UK regulator to provide Account Information Services, meaning it can securely use UK bank’s APIs. What this means for you, is that if you want to connect an external bank account to Revolut, you can do so securely, safe in the knowledge that access will only be used to provide the service you’ve asked for.

Without these APIs, if you want to share the data in your bank account with another company, you have to actually give them your login details. These new APIs will allow you to share the data in your bank account safely and securely, without having to hand over your password.

How it works in practice 👩

Once you've updated to the latest version of the app, featuring Open Banking, select the ‘Linked accounts’ tab from the dashboard, and select your bank. We’re only including UK banks to begin with and will introduce more later on.

Once you’ve chosen your bank, the process is automatic. If you have the bank’s app, we’ll communicate with that app, before bringing the required information back into Revolut. If you don’t have the bank’s app, you’ll be asked to log in on a web browser. At no point in this process does Revolut have access to your credentials, so it’s completely secure.

Freedom and power to you 💪

We’re super proud of this new feature, because it represents a major shift in handing more power back to you, the customer. With Open Banking, you can truly get a handle on all of your finances in a single, secure place.

This couldn’t have happened without support from our community of beta testers, and we’re grateful to all of them for their input. But we’re only just getting started. Let us know what you think of Open Banking by tagging us on social @RevolutApp