By securely linking their Lloyds Bank data, business owners can now provide iwoca up to five years of transaction history with a few quick clicks of a mouse. This speeds up the lender’s already swift application process even further for Lloyds customers, reducing the time they spend submitting bank information to less than 60 seconds.

Iwoca provides short-term loans of up to £200,000 to small and micro businesses across the UK, Germany and Poland. Since launching in 2012, the company has lent more than £550 million to over 21,500 European businesses.

Having moved into profit earlier this year, iwoca established an Open Banking team with the aim of extending its reach to customers of the UK's biggest banks.

Christoph Rieche, CEO and co-founder, iwoca, says future integrations with Barclays, HSBC, RBS, Santander are already in the pipeline and will be switched on within the coming weeks, says

“Open Banking means high street banks no longer have a monopoly on transaction data. As a result, it’s now easier for small businesses to shop around and find the best financial service to meet their needs, without worrying about the brunt of loan application processes,” he says. “Ultimately, we’re excited about the potential for Open Banking. It brings us closer to our vision of making business loans as easy as booking a flight online. Plus, we believe it will help us take a big leap toward achieving our goal to fund one million small businesses - 100,000 of them in the next five years.”

The move to Open Banking is likely to accelerate in the coming months in the wake of a new out-of-the-box Data API release from TrueLayer, which removes the complexity for startups dealing with multiple banking integration protocols by providing a unified data sharing interface for all of the UK’s major banks including Barclays, HSBC Group, Lloyds Group, Santander and RBS, as well as challengers Monzo and Starling Bank.