Digital small business lender iwoca has connected to Barclays and HSBC banks under Open Banking.

This expands the number of Open Banking connections offered by iwoca to three, including Lloyds Bank, and enables more than 60 per cent of the lender’s customers to take advantage of the new regulations, which allows customers to give verified third-parties access to their bank data via a secure application programming interface (API).

Business owners who bank with either Barclays, HSBC or Lloyds can now provide up to five years of transaction history in seconds when applying for a revolving credit facility or long-term loan from iwoca.

A survey of 1,000 small business owners, carried out in November on behalf of iwoca, found that almost three quarters (73 per cent) could not correctly identify what Open Banking is. According to iwoca, a lack of public awareness of Open Banking is an issue in the past but as the initiative approaches its first anniversary, awareness remains persistently low.

Christoph Rieche, chief executive and co-founder of iwoca, commented: “Clearly there’s a need to raise awareness of Open Banking and help small business owners benefit from it, and we’d love to work with the banks and the Open Banking body to achieve that.”

The FinTech stated it will continue to work on finalising connections with the remaining six High Street banks, with connections to Santander and NatWest close to being completed.

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