Pay by Bank

You went looking for Pay by Bank. You found a payments consultancy.

You typed, or clicked, a web address with “pay by bank” in it. It belongs to Optima. We bought this one, and a few others like it, on purpose. Here’s why that matters.

No one owns the name.

A name millions are meant to trust, and nobody is holding it.

“Pay by Bank” is becoming the consumer label for open banking payments. Amazon switched it on for UK shoppers in February 2026, eBay a week later, and the Bank of England’s Payments Forward Plan puts it near the top of the list. Open banking payments reached 351 million in 2025, up 57% in a year, and still only around 6% of all Faster Payments. It is growing quickly from a small base, which is why the name is worth getting right now, while it is still new to most people.

No one owns it. Open Banking Limited calls “Pay by Bank” a generic descriptor and uses it alongside “account-to-account” and “open banking payments”. Three labels for one thing, none of them protected. There is a fair question sitting underneath that: is “Pay by Bank” even the right name? It is a plain description of how the payment works, up against card brands that have meant trust to people for decades.

We bought some of the obvious web addresses to make the point. It cost very little and nobody stopped us.

A payments consultant in Manchester should not be the registered home of Pay by Bank.

The bit that should worry the industry.

If we can buy these addresses quietly, so can a fraudster.

We pointed ours at an honest explainer. A bad actor would not. They would build a page that looks like your bank, wait for the name to become familiar, and harvest logins and payments while people are still learning what a real Pay by Bank checkout looks like.

Paym, the last industry attempt at a simple, shared payments brand, was wound down in 2023 after most people never used it. A trusted name and clear customer education are what make a payment brand work, and they have to be in place before the volumes arrive.

What needs to happen.

Own the name before someone else defines it.

One agreed name. The trademarks and the obvious web addresses bought and held by the industry itself. And a consistent message to consumers about what a genuine Pay by Bank payment looks like, before bad actors define it for them.

The industry is starting to organise around exactly this. Mark O’Keefe, who runs Optima, chairs the Open Banking Working Group at The Payments Association. We are holding these domains for now, and we are happy to hand them to the right industry home when there is one ready to take them and look after them properly. If you are working on Pay by Bank, come and find us.