Token.io: Pay by Bank has moved past the ‘hype’ to go ‘mainstream’

Account-to-account (A2A) payments have moved from “early market hype” to become a mainstream payment method in the UK and Europe, Todd Clyde, chief executive officer of Token.io, told attendees in his Opening Keynote at Open Banking Expo UK & Europe on 21-22 October.

He pointed to the key findings from the Token.io and Open Banking Expo Pay by Bank Signals & Trends 2025 industry survey, with 91% of all respondents saying they had observed a significant increase in demand from merchants this year and project that to continue.

“Now, you might be thinking that’s a no-brainer, merchants will lead the way, it’s a lower cost payment method. But the primary driver here is changing consumer behaviour, changing choice of payment type, [so] that merchants feel that they need to maximise their reach, maximise their acceptance by offering Pay by Bank,” Clyde explained.

PSPs represent the most significant change from last year, with 95% saying that Pay by Bank “is a very important two- to three-year strategy”.

Clyde said: “What drove that dramatic change is market pressure. Their merchants are simply demanding this form of payment. But, also, competitive pressure, so it’s really a defensive move.

“If they don’t supply their customer, they’re going to be disintermediated as the customer goes to a pure play account-to-account payment provider.”

According to the survey report, 67% of banks have launched, or intend to launch, Pay by Bank.

Speaking on the Main Stage, Clyde told the audience that some banks offer Pay by Bank as a new payment proposition for SME customers to “help generate new streams of revenue and improve the stickiness with their customer”, while other banks are doing so to “modernise” their interactions with consumers and improve the user experience.

Clyde was joined on stage by Rachelle Alexis Lim, general manager at Antom EMEA, the payments and digitisation arm of Ant International, to announce a new partnership between Token.io and Antom.

“We’re genuinely excited about our partnership with Token.io. This is key to our strategy of leading, or helping drive, the adoption of A2A in the UK and Europe,” Lim said.

“For us, this is core to our approach, partnering with regional leaders, like Token.io, in order to build deeply localised and robust ecosystems that we can bring to our merchants, so that we can help them confidently go to market, and confidently access the local users in the key markets that they want to excel and win in.”

She added: “By integrating with your best-in-class infrastructure, we’re helping customers have seamless access to the region’s most trusted Open Banking rails.”

For Jess Gerrow, vice president, marketing at Token.io, this year marks “a turning point”.

She told Open Banking Expo: “The enthusiasm across the Expo floor and stages made it clearer than ever: Pay by Bank’s momentum is undeniable.”

Vive le Pay by Bank

Pay by Bank was the focus of a Fireside Chat between Matt Jackson, vice president, partner manager at Token.io and Lirka Bibezic, global head of product management, receivables, cash management competence center at BNP Paribas, on The Payments Show Stage.

Together, they talked about BNP Paribas’ “innovation journey” with Instanea, its Open Banking-based product powered by Token.io.

Lirka Bibezic of BNP Paribas

Bibezic identified several “motivations” for launching Instanea, including client need.

“They [clients] wanted to get paid instantly, and directly within their bank account. Second, they wanted to increase their sales with a product that offers higher payment limits than cards. Third, they also wanted simpler reconciliation between their payments and their invoices. And, obviously, they wanted a solution with lower costs,” she told Jackson.

Jackson and Bibezic highlighted several merchant use cases for BNP Paribas’ Instanea offering during the Fireside Chat, such as in the utilities space, as well as travel, retail and luxury fashion.

Token.io’s Jackson called the “vartiety of use cases really compelling” and said Instanea is “making a real impact across several merchant sectors”.

VRP’s path to ubiquity

In a Powerhouse Debate later on the Main Stage on Day One of the Expo, Charles Damen, Token.io’s chief product officer, discussed how close the UK is to adopting variable recurring payments (VRP) at scale.

He was joined by Andrew Self, head of department, Open Banking and Open Finance at the Financial Conduct Authority, Isabel Pitt, deputy payments director at Nationwide Building Society, and Nick Soulsby, digital product strategy manager at Virgin Money, to consider whether commercial incentives are aligned across banks, fintechs and merchants to make cVRP a success story, and what consumers really want from VRP.

Token.io’s chief product officer Charles Damen

Damen said that, with VRP for sweeping use cases already being used by consumers in the UK, this “gives us a great foundation to build upon to really launch this as a commercially viable product in the market”.

Soulsby told attendees that Virgin Money had introduced Open Banking payments to its credit card customers and now, 96.2% of its one-off payments every month are made through Open Banking.

“I think if a consumer or a customer saw this payment vehicle somewhere after they’d used it with Virgin Money, they’d trust it, they’d understand it, and they’d potentially use it with that other company,” he explained. “And I think the more places we can get this in the checkout, the more relevant it becomes, the more trustworthy it becomes, and the more people will start to use it.”

Nationwide’s Pitt added: “I think what’s exciting about commercial VRP is the ability for us to streamline the user journey. It is going to become a lot easier, less clunky, so it becomes more compelling on a day-to-day basis.

“But it’s all centred around trust and being in control of that journey. We need to make sure that we’re educating customers, that they understand when to use it, why to use it, and how they’re protected.”

When asked what is missing from a scalable, functioning cVRP ecosystem to drive further uptake, Damen said: “The most important element is really the reach. So, for payments to become ubiquitous, it needs participation – bank participation is critical.”

Further reading: Pay by Bank now ‘table stakes’ for banks and PSPs as merchant demand surges