Financial API provider TrueLayer has recorded an eight fold increase in UK consumers using Payment Initiation (PI) to pay for goods and services online during the lockdown.
The majority of growth (88%) was from people with bank accounts held at traditional financial institutions such as Lloyds or Barclays, with account holders at challenger banks such as Monzo and Revolut accounting for 12% of growth.
This indicates an increasing broader acceptance of account-to-account payments beyond the more technologically progressive users at neo banks, says Shefali Roy, COO and CCO of TrueLayer.
"The surge during lockdown has been remarkable and has not been confined to any one group of people - it is very much a broad based trend," she says. "However, perhaps the most interesting result our analyses revealed is that growth has not dropped off - meaning that those who began using Payment Initiation during lockdown are continuing to do so after restrictions were eased."
Prior to the lockdown in the UK, TrueLayer had previously recorded a steady 43% month on month increase in PI adoption. In March, use shot up 460% as many people began working from home or were furloughed.
TrueLayer is estimated to account for more than half of the PI market in the UK.
Says Roy: “Payment Initiation obviously has some way to go before it accounts for a significant proportion of the payments market, nevertheless, this surge in growth appears to mark a step change in adoption and it is yet another unforeseen impact on consumer behaviour caused by the Pandemic.”