The Crown Commercial Service (CCS) is planning to set up an Open Banking Dynamic Purchasing System for the public sector, incorporating data, digital payments and payee services.
It has published a prior information notice, indicating that the supporting contract would be in place for eight years and have a value of up £800 million.
Open banking allows for the sharing of financial data between banks and third party service providers through APIs. In the UK it uses standards and systems created by the not-for-profit Open Banking Ltd, and is subject to enforcement powers held by the Competition and Markets Authority.
The new CCS agreement will be the first it has developed for the relevant services and is anticipated to go live during the autumn. It comes in response to the ongoing growth of the open banking market.
Although the eight-year timespan of the planned framework is longer than most of those set up by CCS, the fact that it will be a dynamic purchasing system will provide scope for new suppliers to be added after it has come into operation.
The move comes in advance of the conclusion of the existing CCS framework for payment acceptance services at the end of February next year.
