Apple Launches “Connected Cards” Using Open Banking (In The UK)

The upcoming Apple
AAPL
iOS 17.1 developer beta shows the first services for the new iPhone Wallet app powered by the U.K.’s Open Banking API. The Wallet app will now be able to show Brits their account balance (including credit cards) from supported banks (including my principal bank, Barclays) as well as their transaction history. The balances will also be shown inline when buying something with Apple Pay, helping users be more financially aware about whether they can responsibly afford the purchase. I liked 9to5.mac’s comment that “International Apple users are used to bemoaning U.S.-only features… However, Apple is launching this feature exclusively in the U.K. due to the existence of an interoperable open banking standard in the country”. They go on to say that “The path to getting a feature like this in other regions, like the U.S., is much less clear”, but I’m sure I agree with that. I think the path is very clear: U.S. regulators need to mandate open banking.

Tap-To-Pay, Here-To-Stay

To be honest, I had expected the platforms (especially Google
GOOG
and Apple) to move into open banking much sooner, because of the importance of bank data in all kinds of value-added service, so I thought it was rather exciting last year when Apple acquired a UK open banking company, Credit Kudos. I wrote at the time that the company’s move into open banking was significant and I noted that in addition to holding an Account Information Service Provider (AISP) license, Credit Kudos were an FCA-regulated credit reference agency, meaning they had access to both open banking data and credit data from banks. As an AISP they can access individual or SME bank account data (with the customer’s consent, of course) and then feed this data into their tools such as their data classification engine (Lotus), insights engine (Atlas), proprietary risk models, decision engine (Assembly), and other income and identity verification tools to improve decisions around credit. There are some great services there, and that’s even before you factor in what Apple’s artificial intelligence wizards might want to do with such data in the future.