Despite the rapid pace of digital transformation over the past decade, many enterprises continue to rely on outdated processes, such as
Verifying customers with paper documents
Managing reporting through spreadsheets
Using BACS for payroll
In fact, a 2025 report found that 58% of companies admit their onboarding process is still reliant on manual documentation. With open banking data services, businesses can stop relying on manual documentation and get real-time information straight from the bank But how exactly can open banking help enterprises? Read on to find out.
Already sold on the benefits of open banking and looking for an infrastructure partner? Contact Yapily to find out how we can help.
1) Know Your Customer (KYC) checks
In 2024, global financial institutions faced over $4.6 billion in regulatory penalties, with a significant portion attributed to customer identification failures and anti-money laundering (AML) violations. Traditional Know Your Customer (KYC) checks—with manual documentation—can take days or even weeks to complete, which delays onboarding, increases operational costs, and is vulnerable to human error.
Open banking offers a more efficient solution. By enabling customers to securely share their bank account information, identity verification can be completed in a matter of minutes.
How can Yapily help?
Yapily Validate streamlines the onboarding process by providing instant access to verified bank account information through a single Application Programming Interface (API) call. This includes:
Account ownership confirmation
Real-time balances and transaction history
Account details such as sort codes and IBANs
By leveraging Yapily Validate, businesses can:
Accelerate customer onboarding
Enhance compliance with KYC regulationsReduce manual errors and operational costs
Improve customer experience with seamless verification
Yapily Validate in action
Allica Bank, a digitally native UK bank serving established SMEs, integrated Yapily Validate to overhaul its onboarding process. By replacing manual document checks with real-time bank data, Allica reduced onboarding time from days to minutes. This allowed them to scale operations while maintaining strict compliance and delivering a smoother, faster experience for business customers, particularly in sectors underserved by traditional banks.
2) Merchant onboarding
Many enterprises still rely on manual processes to onboard new merchants, involving paper forms, lengthy document checks, and multiple back-and-forth emails. This slows down time to revenue, frustrates prospective partners, and increases the risk of compliance issues.
Open banking offers a smarter, embedded solution. By enabling merchants to securely share their bank account information, businesses can automate account verification and identity checks as part of a seamless digital onboarding flow.
How can Yapily help?
Yapily Validate enables businesses to confirm account ownership, access key account details (like sort code and IBAN), and verify identity in real-time—all through a single API. This removes the need for manual documentation and accelerates onboarding without compromising compliance.
Yapily Validate in action
In 2025, Yapily partnered with Adyen, one of the world’s largest payment platforms, to streamline merchant onboarding through open banking. By embedding Yapily’s account information services (AIS), Adyen was able to verify merchant identity and bank details in real-time across Europe—without requiring merchants to leave the platform or submit paperwork manually.
As Yapily CEO Stefano Vaccino explained, “Merchant onboarding and account verification are just the tip of the iceberg.”
This embedded flow reduces drop-off, shortens the onboarding timeline, and gives enterprises greater control over the merchant experience while staying fully compliant with KYC regulations.
2) Credit decision-making
Open banking provides lenders with access to real-time and historical financial data, enabling them to make smarter, faster credit decisions. Instead of relying solely on outdated credit scores, lenders can now use advanced analytics to:
Identify recurring payments and spot multiple income sources
Differentiate between essential and discretionary spending
Build a fuller, more accurate picture of an applicant’s financial health
With deeper insight into customer finances, lenders can reduce bad debt risk, grow profitability, and strengthen their competitive position by serving a wider and more diverse customer base.
How can Yapily help?
By empowering businesses to access open banking data, lenders can get direct access to borrowers’ verified financial data, including income history and real-time transaction records. For even richer insights, Yapily Data Plus enhances raw transaction data with intelligent enrichment and categorisation, helping lenders:
Analyse financial behaviour more accurately
Streamline affordability assessments and risk profiling
Improve credit scoring models without relying on third-party bureaus
Learn more about the Yonder case study here.
3) Smart billing
Traditional monthly billing cycles can place financial strain on customers, leading to overdrafts and missed payments. With open banking, companies can now customise payment schedules to align with their customers' needs, enhancing financial wellbeing and strengthening customer relationships.
How can Yapily help?
Yapily Payments enables businesses to request payments anytime, anywhere, with funds settling in real-time. For recurring transactions, our Variable Recurring Payments (VRP) offer a faster, more cost-effective alternative to Direct Debits.
Benefits include:
Instant settlement: Receive funds in real-time, improving cash flow.
Enhanced customer control: Customers can manage payment consents easily, reducing the risk of overdrafts.
Cost savings: Lower transaction fees compared to traditional methods.
Improved customer experience: Flexible payment options lead to higher satisfaction and retention.
Read more: Variable Recurring Payments vs Direct Debit
4) Online checkout
By selecting open banking at the checkout, customers can instantly complete their purchases without merchants needing to store their sensitive information online.
At the same time, merchants benefit from instant settlement and no interchange fees. And soon, VRP will allow customers to grant long-lasting consent, making future checkouts just as easy as clicking “Buy Now” on Amazon.
How can Yapily help?
Yapily Payments and Yapily VRP facilitate real-time payments between bank accounts while reducing the risk of fraud or misplaced funds due to typos. They also help businesses:
Save around 3% on card transaction fees
Avoid lengthy settlement periods associated with card payments
Improve security and customer trust through direct, bank-to-bank transfers
5) Bill payments
As of early 2025, nearly 14 million people in the UK are actively using open banking services—a significant increase from previous years. One of the key drivers behind this rapid adoption is the convenience of bill payments. Customers can now settle their utility bills by simply scanning a QR code on their invoice or clicking a payment link sent via text message. Compared to traditional methods like card payments or manual bank transfers, this approach is easier, faster, and more secure.
How can Yapily help?
Yapily Payments, along with the upcoming Pay by Link feature, enables companies to create persistent payment links that can be embedded into QR codes or sent via email or SMS. When a customer scans the QR code or clicks the link, they're directed to a secure payment page and then to their banking app for authorisation. This streamlined process offers:
Enhanced security: Reduces the risk of fraud or errors due to manual entry.
Cost savings: Eliminates card transaction fees, saving companies around 3%.
Faster settlements: Funds are transferred in real-time, improving cash flow.
6) Bulk payments
Open banking helps companies orchestrate bulk payouts (like processing payroll) as an embedded process within their own platform. It’s simply requires a direct API integration into their business bank account. No more file uploads or convoluted processes.
How can Yapily help?
Yapily Bulk Payments lets companies make multiple payments from a single bank account to a list of recipients in one transaction. Working in the background, our API is invisible to the end user and gives companies complete control of their payment experience.
7) Automated reconciliation
For companies handling large volumes of customer payments, reconciliation can be a tedious process. Customers often enter incorrect payment references and amounts, slowing down the process.
Open banking streamlines the process by pre-populating the correct payment reference and amount, eliminating room for human error.
How can Yapily help?
Yapily Payments pre-populates all payment details in the API requests, so the customer simply authorises it. And Yapily Virtual Accounts provides instant notification for incoming payments. Companies can maintain a single account for all their bank transfers, which are exclusively for reconciliations and can be settled into the main account at any time.
8) Variable Payments
In the future, open banking will enable customers to grant long-lasting consent for variable payments, such as their favourite meal box subscription, without requiring a lengthy application form, as is the case with Direct Debit. For instance, a customer might choose three meals one week, and then two meals the next. With open banking, their payment will adjust automatically.
How can Yapily help?
Yapily Variable Recurring Payments enables merchants and payment service providers to utilise open banking for recurring payments of varying amounts without requiring re-authentication. This solution offers:
Enhanced customer control: Customers can manage payment consents easily, reducing the risk of overdrafts.
Cost savings: Lower transaction fees compared to traditional methods.
Improved customer experience: Flexible payment options lead to higher satisfaction and retention
9) Personalised experiences
In today's experience-driven market, companies must transition from offering generic products to delivering tailored solutions. By leveraging customers’ financial data, businesses can segment their audience based on income, spending behaviour, credit history, and more, enabling them to offer:
Tailor-made products
Personalised pricing
Better-targeted marketing campaigns
How can Yapily help?
Yapily Data provides companies with access to customers' purchase history, allowing for personalised product offerings, enhanced customer engagement, and improved conversion rates. Additionally, it complements other data sources to help build stronger consumer and business profiles.
Choose Yapily as your open banking partner
From seamless onboarding to instant payments and personalised customer experiences, the power of open banking is reshaping how enterprises operate—and Yapily is at the forefront of that transformation. As both an AISP and PISP, Yapily offers deep data access and robust payment capabilities through a single API. With broad European coverage and advanced features like Variable Recurring Payments, bulk payments, and transaction enrichment, Yapily’s infrastructure gives enterprises everything they need to scale smarter, faster, and more securely.
Want to explore how open banking can unlock value for your business? Book a call with a Yapily expert today.