Lloyds Bank Brands Can Use Mastercard’s Open Banking Connect 

Lloyds Bank credit card holders, including Halifax and the Bank of Scotland, can now use Mastercard’s Open Banking Connect to transfer funds, make withdrawals and make payments.

“Offering innovative, convenient and secure ways for people to pay is what we all strive for at Mastercard, and our Open Banking solutions bring together the best both card and account-to-account payment rails. Lloyds customers can now pay down their credit card balances directly from an account of their choice,” Kelly Devine, divisional president for U.K. and Ireland at Mastercard, said in a press release on Tuesday (Feb. 23).

The new service gives the bank’s cardholders the ability to pay their credit card bills using the mobile app. Users can also withdraw money and pay bills from any account they designate. This is all made possible because of application programming interfaces (APIs).

“We are constantly looking for new ways to offer our customers security, choice and convenience, and this partnership with Mastercard allows us to do just that. We want to make it quick and easy for our customers to pay their credit card bills in just a few clicks, safe in the knowledge that their payments are completely secure,” Elyn Corfield, managing director of consumer finance at Lloyds Banking Group, said.

By initiating a PISP (Payment Initiation Service Provider) payment using Mastercard’s Open Banking Connect system, the Lloyds app gives customers freedom of choice over which account they want to use for payments. Customers can use this without having to key in any additional card or personal information.

This new feature is available in addition to Lloyds’ existing open banking and money management features, which give people the ability to manage their money across different accounts, even from different banks.

Mastercard Open Banking Connect gives third-party service providers the ability to universally connect to financial institutions’ open banking functionality no matter what API.

Open banking gives banks and other financial institutions the ability to share their customers’ data with third parties, making for a more streamlined banking experience. APIs offer a connection that enables third parties to tap into banks’ data and build their own app-focused offerings.