Citibank is to join the UK's Open Banking framework to provide an aggregated payments collections service for its business clients, tapping the APIs of the country's largest nine banks.
Citi has become the first corporate bank to enroll with the UK Open Banking Directory as a Payment Initiation Service Provider (PISP), with a view to meeting treasurer's evolving needs for easy access to payment data without the need to build applications or interfaces to connect to proprietary banking portals.
Open Banking in the UK, which went live in January 2018, requires the nine largest UK banks to publish open APIs, enabling regulated third party providers to access bank accounts securely and with account holder consent.
While much of the focus on Open Banking has centred around data sharing with fintech startups, Citi is taking advantage of the framework to streamline the business of collecting and making payments on behalf of its business customers.
Ireti Samuel-Ogbu, EMEA head payments and receivables, treasury and trade solutions, Citi says inclusion in the directory is part of a a wider shift in the global banking landscape from batch processing to real-time payments and collections as banking systems becoming accessible through APIs.
He states: “Open Banking in the UK is particularly attractive to us and our clients as it enables collections with open APIs standardized and live across the Competition and Markets Authority nine banks."