TrueLayer, a provider of financial APIs, has recorded an eight-fold increase in consumers using Payment Initiation (PI) to pay for goods and services online during the lockdown.
PI is a new form of online payment which allows payments to be made directly via a customer’s online banking.
As a result, transaction fees are typically lower than other means of online payment.
The majority of PI 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, it reports.
The London firm said this indicates a broader acceptance of PI beyond the more technologically progressive users at neo banks.
Prior to the lockdown in the UK, TrueLayer had previously recorded a 43% month on month increase in PI adoption.
Shefali Roy, COO and CCO of TrueLayer, said: “These statistics reveal that even during a crisis people are willing to quickly embrace technological innovation if they believe it makes their life better or more convenient.
Roy notes that growth has not fallen, meaning that those who began using Payment Initiation during lockdown are continuing to do so after changes in restrictions.
“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,” said Roy.
TrueLayer’s Payment API has been adopted by firms including ANNA Money, Nutmeg, Revolut and Stake.
TrueLayer has also been approved by the UK’s Cabinet Office to provide its Payment API to Government departments enabling PI to be used within the public sector.
The firm is one of over 200 firms shortlisted for inclusion on BusinessCloud’s 100 FinTech Disrupters.