Open Banking has laid the foundations for secure account-to-account payments, with adoption accelerating rapidly, and successful payments increasing by 53% year on year in 2025, according to the FCA (2025 figures: source FCA).
It has also delivered significant security benefits, including the ability to verify account details and approve payments directly through a familiar banking app, all within a trusted framework of regulated providers. As a result, fraud rates for Open Banking payments are significantly lower than the industry average, according to Open Banking (source Open Banking).
The risk will continue to reduce as UK Payment Initiative’s new form of recurring payments – ‘commercial variable recurring payments’ – becomes a more normal way of paying, because the riskiest moment in any transaction becomes less frequent.
There will always be a point of risk in any payment, and it is in that moment of trust that you ask yourself, should I pay?
These new recurring payments improve this in three key ways.
First, as with Open Banking, you do not hand over any payment details. No account numbers, no card details. Instead, you are directed to your banking app to approve the payment. With the new recurring payments, you approve a trusted organisation to take payments from your account. Your bank verifies that organisation as part of the Open Banking network before allowing anything to proceed.
Second, once everything is set up, there is nothing more for you to do. The risk at the point of payment is removed, with your bank and the supplier’s payment provider handling the process securely in the background.
Third, you can set clear guardrails around these recurring payments. You can control the size of individual transactions, cap how much a supplier can take each month, and withdraw authorisation instantly within your banking app.
There will never be a completely risk-free payment. However, this type of recurring payment reduces risk further, allowing you to focus on the more important question in any buyer relationship: do you trust the supplier to deliver, rather than whether the payment mechanism itself is safe.
