Open banking appears to be going from strength to strength in 2026, with eBay becoming the second marketplace giant to offer Pay by Bank in the same week.
eBay has pledged its support for open banking in the UK by investing in TrueLayer and launching Pay by Bank at checkout.
The ecommerce giant announced on 19 February that users will be able to select Pay by Bank when completing a purchase, allowing them to pay directly from their bank account.
“We’re constantly evolving eBay’s checkout experience to expand choice and make paying on our platform safer, faster and more seamless,” said Avritti Khandurie Mittal, VP of Product for eBay Services.
“Pay by Bank represents an important step in diversifying our payment mix with a secure, real-time way for buyers to pay directly from their bank accounts.”
Talk around the benefits of Pay by Bank has gathered pace this week, with eBay’s move following a similar announcement from Amazon, which also positioned the payment method against traditional card payments.
Both companies highlighted customers do not need to enter card details or manually update payment information, as well as noting there are no expiry dates and users retain control over each transaction.
There are clear benefits for merchants too, particularly around interchange fees paid to major card networks such as Visa and Mastercard.
eBay goes a step further
TrueLayer finds itself in the middle of both announcements this week, reinforcing its role in leading the charge on open banking in the UK through partnerships with huge ecommerce platforms.
The company will provide the underlying payment infrastructure as part of both agreements.
These partnerships are significant for the UK payments ecosystem due to regulators and policymakers attempting to push open banking as an alternative to card networks, especially as the UK looks to reduce reliance on Visa and Mastercard.
Consumer adoption has been slower than some had hoped, however, partnerships with household names such as eBay could help ramp up usage and improve the declining awareness of the method.
Francesco Simoneschi, CEO and Co-founder of TrueLayer, is among those that believes so explaining “the partnership with eBay brings Pay by Bank into the everyday shopping journey of millions of UK customers, adding “this is another step towards a real-time payments ecosystem that aligns with modern consumer expectations.”
While some consumers are still warming to open banking, ecommerce platforms appear more ready to embrace it. eBay has gone a step further by investing in TrueLayer through its venture arm.
A press release stated the company’s decision to invest follows a year of strong momentum for Pay by Bank across Europe, “as merchants increasingly prioritise fast, safe, and flexible payment options that align with evolving consumer payment preferences.”
The UK’s National Payments Vision, a government backed framework launched in 2024 to promote account to account payments in ecommerce, has also played a role in raising awareness.
Amazon linked its Pay by Bank launch to the Vision, which has contributed to more than 16 million active users and 33 million payments processed in November 2025 alone, a 50% increase year on year, according to Open Banking Limited.
Is there a risk?
TrueLayer will see these partnerships as both a commercial and strategic achievement, strengthening its position as one of Europe’s leading open banking platforms.
While UK policymakers and open banking advocates will welcome this momentum, there is a potential concern that two of the country’s largest marketplaces are now relying on the same underlying infrastructure.
This concentration creates a single point of failure, meaning if a major issue were to occur, Pay by Bank services across both platforms could be disrupted at the same time. This could potentially damage consumer confidence in open banking at a crucial stage of adoption.
TrueLayer has emphasised that its systems operate with more than 99.9% uptime and the company says its connections to bank APIs across Europe are continuously stress tested with high volumes of requests to identify issues and feed them back to banks.
“Global merchants don’t experiment with payments at this level of scale – they standardise on infrastructure that is proven and resilient. Supporting merchants like eBay and Amazon requires strong bank connectivity, real-time reliability, and high operational standards. TrueLayer has invested in this infrastructure for the last decade, and recent adoption by major merchants reflects the payments network we’ve built to support some of the world’s largest businesses,” said Simoneschi.
