NEW ORLEANS—Open banking has a lot of moving parts, but at the end of the day it might well come down to two words: consumer acceptance. 

“In the U.S. it does seem that consumers are willing to engage in open banking to initiate payments, to link a bank account, to do things like a digital wallet load,” said Mike Herd, Nacha Executive Vice President, ACH Network Administration. At the same time, Herd acknowledged a “generational divide, where we see less resistance by younger generations who are mobile first and have been on social media platforms versus older generations who might think ‘I will never do that.’”

At the April 29 Smarter Faster Payments 2025 session “Open Banking Around the World: Does the Reality Match the Hype?” Herd was joined by payments association leaders from New Zealand, South Africa and the United Kingdom. 

David Pitt, CEO, Pay.UK, said that “from a consumer point of view, I think it’s taken off.” He noted that when UK consumers paid their taxes in April there were 1.3 million open banking-enabled transactions valued at 5 billion pounds ($6.6 billion). One reason: ease of use. 

“It’s very simple. Just fill out your tax form, straight through open banking, out to your bank, straight to your tax authority,” said Pitt. And while that’s only 5% of payments, Pitt said the volume is growing. 

In New Zealand, consumers are becoming more at ease with open banking with it being used to pay for the country’s ubiquitous sausage sizzle snack. But with open banking off and running, only now are regulators catching up.

“Our biggest issue now is how the regulations come after the market formation,” said Jane-Renee Retimana, Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer, Payments NZ. “Our biggest challenge is going to be how we merge the two together without slowing down progress.”

At the end of the day, no matter what country it is, consumers are the ones who will largely decide whether open banking gets a thumbs up or down.

“You can only mandate connectivity among participants; you can’t mandate use,” said Ghita Erling, CEO, The Payments Association of South Africa. “If the convenience isn’t there for the consumer, there’s nothing that a regulator can do to drive it. I think we’re going to test the boundaries of that over the next few years.”