The sixth annual Pay by Bank industry survey has launched, with Token.io and Open Banking Expo inviting senior professionals across banking, payments, retail and fintech to submit their views on what the payment method needs to do next.
The anonymous survey, which takes approximately seven minutes to complete, is open to respondents across the UK, Europe and beyond, and closes on 23 September 2026. Retailers, banks, payment service providers, third-party providers and other stakeholders involved in the development and adoption of Pay by Bank are all eligible to take part.
What the Pay by Bank industry survey will ask this year
This year’s questions cover whether Pay by Bank can become a genuine alternative to cards. Respondents will be asked for views on branding, the point-of-sale experience, recurring payments and the emerging role of agentic commerce, a set of topics that reflects how much ground the method still needs to cover before it sits comfortably alongside card payments in a consumer’s everyday choices.
The survey will also probe which factors are currently driving or holding back adoption, where responsibility should sit when a payment goes wrong, and the level of demand for recurring Pay by Bank functionality across Europe. For UK respondents specifically, the questions turn to commercial variable recurring payment (cVRP) use cases: which ones businesses would most like to see delivered next.
Those who complete the survey can opt into a prize draw for two complimentary passes to Open Banking Expo UK & Europe 2026, which takes place at the Business Design Centre in London on 13–14 October. Token.io is the Headline Partner of that event, where it will discuss the survey findings with industry participants.
The backdrop: growth figures that need scrutiny
The timing of this year’s Pay by Bank industry survey sits against a backdrop of headline growth numbers that are striking on their face. According to the Token.io Blog, global payment transactions facilitated by Open Banking are projected to exceed $116 billion in 2026, up from just under $4 billion in 2021. The same source puts Europe’s share of that global total at 75% for 2026.
These are Token.io’s own projections, and the company has a commercial interest in the growth of Open Banking payments, so they warrant that caveat. But even discounting for house optimism, the directional shift (from a niche channel to something approaching mainstream transaction volumes) is consistent with what regulators and payment networks have been observing across Europe.
The harder problem is on the consumer side. The same Token.io Blog post reports that only 15% of consumers fully understand what Open Banking is and how it is used, while a further 20% are aware of it but remain confused. That gap between transaction volume and consumer comprehension is precisely the kind of structural tension the survey is designed to surface: merchants may be pushing the product, but the people actually paying with it often do not know what they are agreeing to.
Previous survey data reinforces that merchant-side enthusiasm. According to a separate Token.io Blog post reflecting on earlier findings, 91% of survey respondents recognised strong merchant demand for Pay by Bank. Whether that demand is translating into actual consumer uptake at the checkout is a different question, and one the sixth iteration of the survey appears to be probing more directly than its predecessors.
The recurring payments questions are worth watching in particular. cVRP has been a long-discussed mechanism for enabling Pay by Bank to compete with card-based direct debits and subscriptions. Getting industry views on which use cases businesses want prioritised should at least give policymakers and payment schemes a cleaner signal on where to focus implementation efforts.
The findings will be presented at Open Banking Expo UK & Europe on 13–14 October at the Business Design Centre in London, giving respondents a direct line from their answers to the policy and commercial conversations happening in the room.
