London, 2 August, 2022 – Open banking platform Yapily has today launched Yapily Variable Recurring Payments (VRP) to accelerate innovation across the open banking ecosystem.

Put simply, VRP allows businesses and consumers to use open banking for recurring payments of varying amounts, without the need to re-authenticate every transaction. This could be automatically moving money between their own bank accounts now and paying subscriptions or household bills in future. VRPs are a much anticipated open banking solution that promises greater returns for merchants and much safer and more convenient payments for end users. 

Volume, the one-click checkout payments platform, will be using Yapily VRP to enable its UK merchant customers to save costs, increase payment volumes, and provide a frictionless alternative to standing orders and direct debit payments over time. 

As part of the launch, Yapily is enabling more participants within the open banking ecosystem to benefit from VRP by partnering with Ozone API. Together, Yapily and Ozone API bring a complete solution for banks and financial institutions to go beyond minimum regulatory requirements and commercialise their APIs.

The announcement follows the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) mandate that the UK’s nine largest banks must support VRP for sweeping (me-to-me payments) by 31st July 2022. 

Ben Aier, VP Product at Yapily, remarked: “This is a great example of how Yapily and open banking are helping to create a healthy payments ecosystem where there is value for every participant. We are proud to be breaking down the barriers to innovation in this space and meeting the evolving needs of banks, merchants, PSPs, businesses, and consumers alike.”

Simone Martinelli, Founder and CEO at Volume, said: “VRP has triggered the next wave of disruption at the checkout. It is the direct debit equivalent of open banking, except where the movement of money is quicker, cheaper, and the customer has more control. This has the potential to be transformative for any business. At Volume, we are on a mission to remove hidden fees at the online checkout for both consumers and merchants, and Yapily is helping us to turn that vision into a reality.”

Huw Davies, Co-Founder and Chief Commercial Officer at Ozone API, commented: “We founded Ozone API when we saw how difficult, expensive, and time consuming it can be for banks and financial institutions to deliver high quality and standards-based APIs. Partnering with Yapily means we can now deliver the benefits of VRP to these firms, enabling them to build deeper customer relationships, reduce losses to payments fraud, and ultimately generate new revenue streams. Together with Yapily, we have everything a bank needs to switch on and monetise this opportunity. Now the CMA VRP for sweeping deadline has passed for the UK’s nine largest banks, it’s our mission to ensure that no bank gets left behind.”

Maria Palmieri, Director of Public Policy at Yapily, added: “We have seen a positive response from industry to the implementation of sweeping, however, only when VRP APIs become more widely available will the truly innovative use cases for open banking be unlocked. This will not only enable better and fairer financial services for everyone, but will lead to increased adoption from both consumers and businesses. Now, more collaboration between banks, third-party providers, and policymakers is needed to ensure the transition from me-to-me to me-to-business payments materialises.”