What is Open Banking?

According to Investopedia, “Open Banking is also known as ‘open bank data.’ Open Banking is a banking practice that provides third-party financial service providers open access to consumer banking, transaction, and other financial data from banks and non-bank financial institutions through the use of application programming interfaces (APIs). Open banking will allow the networking of accounts and data across institutions for use by consumers, financial institutions, and third-party service providers. Open Banking is becoming a major source of innovation that is poised to reshape the banking industry.”

How will Open Banking reshape the industry?

Open Banking puts bank account holders’ data back into their hands, giving payers the ability to permit third-party access to create new value-added solutions. By requiring all banks in the market to participate, bespoke relationships that only provide value to a small group of players are eliminated. Open Banking also enables non-banks to access account holder data and use it to build new innovative solutions to solve problems.

How is online banking different than direct debit or other online payment methods?

  • BACS direct debit (UK) requires multiple days for a payment to clear. Instant payments that can be processed via open banking connections can be cleared immediately or near-immediately
  • BACS direct debit requires payer mandates to be stored on file, instant payments + open banking connections allows for the creation of collection options that do not require mandates, which can be clunky for payer and processor
  • Funds are irrevocable vs direct debit, where the consumer can revoke funds for an unlimited amount of time
What you need to know: Open Banking

How does Flywire address Open Banking?

Flywire leverages Open Banking in an effort to provide flexible online payment options to payers around the globe. By partnering with Trustly, our clients are able to offer customers around the globe fast, easy ways to pay directly from their local bank accounts, while streamlining payment and receivable reconciliation for administrators.

"After years of collaboration, we're thrilled to extend our successful partnership into the UK and Austria. Flywire is an innovative leader in its field and we're glad to help the company accept fast, simple and secure payments directly from its customers' online bank accounts. Innovative payment methods help ensure Flywire is able to continue to offer its market-leading service." - Michael Garcia, Director, Financial Services Trustly

How does Flywire work with Trustly?

Flywire offers businesses, educational institutions, and healthcare providers the ability to offer customers a highly-tailored payment experience – customized by country, currency and vertical. Trustly offers cross-border online banking payments straight to and from consumer bank accounts and connects businesses, institutions and consumers by linking together more than 3,000 banks in Europe. Working together, we continue to remove friction from the global payment process to provide a better overall experience.

How many online banking options does Flywire offer?

As part of Flywire’s extensive list of convenient payment methods, we offer a variety of online payment methods for international and domestic payers worldwide. We are pleased to announce that these options have been expanded to now include the United Kingdom and Austria.

What does this mean for students and institutions?

For students and payers, online banking increases payment choice, speeds payments and improves security.

For institutions, online banking reduces the cost of payment acceptance, improves transaction success rates and significantly reduces fraud risk associated with traditional card or wire payments.

What are the overall benefits?

Benefits from Open Banking include:

  • Immediate payments: Payment Initiation Service Providers (PISPs) trigger instant ‘push’ payments from a student bank account to an institution when authorised.
  • Reduced cost: Online banking carries much lower processing fees than credit and debit cards.
  • Reduced failure rates: Push payments will only show the credit on the institution account if the debit is successful, thus reducing credit risk and ensuring there are sufficient funds in the student’s account. This significantly decreases the failure rates experienced by direct debit.
  • Greater security for payers: New mandates could be authenticated through a payer’s online banking account, making fraudulent payments much harder to commit.

Want to learn more about Open Banking?

We invite you to check out the following resources to learn more about how Flywire addresses online banking:

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