Open Banking Payments Are Estimated to Be Roughly 6x Safer Than the UK Payments Average
Pay by Bank usually gets talked about for its price. New independently-published data suggests the bigger story might be safety: Open Banking payments are showing a fraud rate around six times lower than UK payments as a whole.
Open Banking Limited’s Payments & Fraud Monitor for June 2026 found around 1 in 6,000 Open Banking payments were fraudulent, versus roughly 1 in 2,500 across UK payments generally, a fraud rate around six times lower. Variable Recurring Payments and app-authenticated journeys came out even safer than one-off or browser-based payments. Pay by Bank is not only cheaper than cards, the data suggests it is demonstrably safer too.
The Headline Numbers
Open Banking Limited publishes a regular Payments & Fraud Monitor tracking how Open Banking payments perform against fraud, alongside the wider UK payments industry. The edition covering June 2026, published on 8 July, put a clear number on something the industry has long suspected: account-to-account payments are not just a cheaper way to pay, they are turning out to be a meaningfully safer one too.
Figures as reported in Open Banking Limited’s Payments & Fraud Monitor for June 2026, published 8 July 2026.
To put that another way: if you lined up 6,000 Open Banking payments, statistically only one would be expected to be fraudulent. Line up the same number of UK payments generally, and you would expect to see more than double that many go wrong.
Why this stat matters: pricing arguments are easy to counter with “but is it safe?” This is an independently published number that answers that question directly, in Open Banking’s favour.
Why Open Banking Payments Are Harder to Defraud
The gap is not an accident of the data. It follows from how an Open Banking payment is actually built.
No card data anywhere in the flow
There is no 16-digit card number, expiry date, or CVC typed into a checkout form or sitting in a merchant’s database, so card-skimming and card-data breaches simply have nothing to steal or leak in the first place.
Nothing sensitive to steal, nowhere for it to leak fromApproved inside the customer’s own bank
Every payment is confirmed using the payer’s normal banking login and biometric check, the same security their bank already applies to everything else, rather than a one-off form a fraudster could copy.
Strong Customer Authentication, every timeEach approval is tied to one payment
A card number, once copied, can be reused again and again. An Open Banking approval authorises one specific payment to one specific business, so intercepting it does not hand a fraudster a reusable key to keep taking money.
No reusable credential to exploit
Cards were designed decades before smartphones, banking apps, or biometric logins existed, and a lot of card fraud exploits exactly that gap. Open Banking payments were built for a world where the customer already carries strong bank-grade authentication in their pocket, and the data suggests that design difference shows up directly in the fraud numbers.
App-Authenticated Journeys Score Even Better
The June 2026 monitor did not stop at one overall Open Banking number. It also broke out the results by journey type, and the pattern held up: the more the payment happens inside the banking app itself, the safer it appears to be.
Variable Recurring Payments (VRPs) and other app-authenticated journeys came out even safer than one-off or browser-based payments. A VRP lets a customer authorise a business to take a series of payments within limits they set, without re-entering their bank details each time, and that tighter, app-native flow appears to leave fraudsters even less room to work with.
The pattern makes intuitive sense: a browser-based checkout still has a web page in the loop, one more surface that a convincing fake could imitate. An app-authenticated journey skips that entirely, going straight from the payment request to the customer’s own trusted banking app. Fewer steps outside the bank’s own walls appears to mean fewer chances for something to go wrong.
What This Means for Merchants and Customers
For a business choosing how to take payments, this data adds a second, independent reason to Pay by Bank’s usual pitch of lower fees and instant settlement.
Fewer disputes and chargebacks to manage
A lower fraud rate on the payments you take generally means fewer fraudulent transactions to investigate, dispute, or absorb the cost of, on top of Open Banking payments not carrying card-style chargebacks in the first place.
A genuine answer to “is it safe?”
Customers who hesitate over a new payment method because it feels unfamiliar can be pointed to an independently published number, not just a reassurance from the business taking their money.
A reason to prefer app-authenticated flows
Where you have a choice, steering customers toward paying inside their banking app, rather than a browser-based flow, lines up with where the data shows the strongest safety record.
“Safety and price are usually treated as a trade-off. This data suggests that with Pay by Bank, you are not trading one for the other.”
None of this means Open Banking payments are immune to fraud. Scams that trick someone into approving a payment themselves, such as fake QR codes or fake payment links, remain a real risk with any payment method, which is exactly why checking the genuine web address and the payee before paying still matters. What this data shows is a significantly lower rate of successful fraud across the category as a whole, which is a meaningfully different and stronger claim than “it feels secure.”
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Open Banking safer than other UK payment methods?
According to Open Banking Limited’s Payments & Fraud Monitor for June 2026, around 1 in 6,000 Open Banking payments were fraudulent, compared with roughly 1 in 2,500 across UK payments generally, a fraud rate around six times lower. Variable Recurring Payments and app-authenticated journeys came out even safer than one-off or browser-based payments.
Why is Open Banking harder to defraud than cards?
Every Open Banking payment is approved inside the payer’s own banking app, using the login and biometric checks their bank already applies. There is no card number to steal, copy, or reuse, and no separate checkout form for a scammer to intercept, which removes several of the most common routes fraudsters use against card payments.
What is a Variable Recurring Payment (VRP)?
A Variable Recurring Payment lets a customer authorise a business to take a series of payments from their account, within limits the customer sets, without re-entering their bank details each time. According to the June 2026 monitor, VRPs and other app-authenticated journeys showed an even lower fraud rate than one-off or browser-based open banking payments.
Does this mean Open Banking payments can never be scammed?
No method is completely immune to fraud, and scams that trick a person into approving a payment themselves, such as fake QR codes or fake payment links, remain a risk with any payment method. What the data shows is a significantly lower rate of successful fraud on Open Banking payments overall, not a guarantee for every transaction. Read the report: Open Banking Payments Fraud Monitor, June 2026 edition.
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References
- Open Banking Limited, “Open Banking Payments Fraud Monitor: June 2026 edition.” Available at: https://www.openbanking.org.uk/insights/open-banking-payments-fraud-monitor-june-2026-edition/
- Financial Conduct Authority. Strong Customer Authentication. Available at: https://www.fca.org.uk/firms/strong-customer-authentication
Important information
Source data. The fraud-rate figures in this article are as reported in Open Banking Limited’s Payments & Fraud Monitor for June 2026, published 8 July 2026. Confirm the exact figures and report title directly with Open Banking Limited before relying on them, as monitoring periods and methodology can be updated or restated.
Not a fraud guarantee. A lower reported fraud rate describes historical data across the Open Banking category as a whole, not a guarantee for any individual payment or business. Standard fraud-awareness practices still apply.
Not financial advice. This article is general information about UK payment safety data and does not constitute financial, legal, or tax advice.
SSV SmartPay terms. Full pricing, terms, and conditions are available at ssvsmartpay.co/our-pricing. SSV SmartPay Limited is registered in England and Wales (CRN 15424021). SSV SmartPay is not directly FCA-regulated; payment initiation services are provided by FCA-authorised Payment Institution partners.
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Start free trial Book a demo Or get in touch with the team →Frequently Asked Questions
Is Open Banking safer than other UK payment methods?
According to the June 2026 Payments & Fraud Monitor cited in the article, Open Banking payments recorded a fraud rate around six times lower than UK payments overall. App-authenticated journeys and Variable Recurring Payments performed even better.
Why are Open Banking payments harder to defraud than card payments?
Open Banking payments are approved through the customer’s own bank, using their normal login and authentication methods. They also do not require customers to enter reusable card numbers, expiry dates or CVCs into a checkout form.
Do Open Banking payments use card details?
No. The payment flow described in the article does not require a 16-digit card number, expiry date or CVC, reducing the amount of reusable payment data that could potentially be stolen.
What are Variable Recurring Payments (VRPs)?
VRPs allow a customer to authorise a business to take a series of payments within limits set by the customer, without entering their bank details each time. The article notes that VRPs and other app-authenticated journeys showed particularly low fraud levels.
Can Open Banking payments still be affected by scams?
Yes. Open Banking is not immune to fraud. Fake QR codes, fake payment links and scams that persuade customers to authorise a payment themselves can still occur, so customers should verify the payee and payment details before approving a transaction.
