As of today, users can leverage Open Banking payments to move money instantly between any bank accounts they have connected on the Bud app without having to switch apps or enter card details. In the coming weeks we will be expanding that to cover connected investment and savings accounts.

Payments are a huge step forward for the app, but they’re not the only major change that users will see. Teams across the business have been busily surfacing some of the latest features available to our clients, so it’s great to see those come together in the app. We’ve added American Express credit cards to the list of sources available to users to aggregate and we’ve built out our Rent Recognition feature by adding Equifax as a destination for rent data. We’ve also launched a new, and far more accurate, merchant identification service that, in turn, powers a service connecting transaction data with loyalty schemes like Nectar.

Whilst these are all exciting new features, there are many more on the way so watch this space, or better - head over to the app store and download the app for yourself. 

For our clients in the UK and across Europe...

The Bud app is there to make sure that our data services are helping people. We do this in two main ways, the first is to find new ways to help customers unlock their financial data to gain new insights. It’s this insight that drives the design decisions behind our powerful and simple APIs. The second is to work with our clients to find ways that their organisations can leverage our Data Services to work more closely with their users. 

For businesses, the Open Banking (in the UK) and PSD2 (across Europe) payments that we provide have a number of advantages compared to existing payment methods.

• They're faster: The vast majority of payments running through our system will use the faster payments network and settle in minutes;
• They're safer: They reduce the likelihood of both fraud and inadvertent user error by removing the need for users to enter card details;
• They're cheaper: Removing the reliance on the card rails means that payments can be initiated at a fraction of the cost.

We said at the beginning of the year that 2020 would be the year that we started to see Open Banking entering “phase 2” of its development, where the debate moves from being about aggregation and data access to being about generating insight and action based on that data. Payments are a key part of enabling that transition so we’re excited to get them live and even more excited about what’s to come. Stay tuned!

The payments features in the Bud app are built exclusively using our Payments API. For more on how to use the API to deliver similar features in your own apps and services, check out the website or...

Download the Payments product fact sheet here: