Open banking has moved from experiment to essential infrastructure. With over 13 million users in the UK and volumes growing every quarter, enterprises are no longer asking if they should integrate open banking, but how.
Here’s a checklist of what enterprises should demand when choosing their open banking partner.
1. Reliability comes first
No enterprise system can tolerate downtime when it comes to payments or financial data. Reliability must be measured, monitored, and transparent.
At Asima, we publish performance targets in our Service Level Agreement: 99.5% monthly uptime and sub-300ms response times on key endpoints. Monitoring, incident reporting, and accountability are built in. For your business, that means fewer interruptions and faster recovery if things go wrong.
2. Scalability without surprises
Open banking adoption is accelerating. Enterprises need assurance that the infrastructure will scale as customer numbers grow and transaction volumes spike – whether that’s during seasonal peaks, promotional campaigns, or unexpected demand.
Asima runs on Google Cloud, leveraging serverless architecture to scale instantly in response to demand. You get elastic performance without the hidden costs or latency that come with legacy systems.
3. Predictable pricing and cost reduction
Legacy card schemes lock businesses into percentage fees that grow with revenue, regardless of the value delivered. Enterprises need clarity and predictability.
Asima’s pricing is straightforward: a low, per-transaction fee that undercuts card costs and eliminates surprises. That makes it easy to forecast savings and demonstrate value to finance teams.
4. Security and compliance
Financial infrastructure must meet the highest standards of trust. That means UK data residency, GDPR compliance, and alignment with the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025. It also means proactive monitoring to detect fraud before it impacts customers.
Asima combines regulatory alignment with proprietary fraud detection, trained on years of transaction data and powered by Vertex AI. Security is not an add-on – it’s at the core of our platform.
5. Developer experience
Integration costs are often underestimated. Clean, well-documented APIs, sandbox environments, and responsive support can cut weeks off development timelines and reduce long-term maintenance overhead.
Asima is built developer-first. Our APIs are designed for clarity, speed, and scale, so your teams can focus on building customer value rather than troubleshooting bank connections.
6. Roadmap alignment
Open banking isn’t static. The Future Entity will raise standards across the ecosystem, while the UK Payments Initiative is introducing Smart Debits (cVRP) as a modern alternative to Direct Debit and card-on-file.
Asima is aligned to these developments from day one. That means you can migrate subscriptions, memberships, and other recurring payments onto a smarter, faster, lower-cost model without another costly round of integration.
7. Tech-for-good credentials
Trust is earned not only through performance, but through values. As part of Wonderful Payments, Asima also powers free online donations for UK charities via Wonderful.org.
That track record demonstrates our resilience and our commitment to building infrastructure that delivers social as well as commercial impact.
Choosing the right foundation
Open banking integration isn’t just about connectivity. It’s about choosing the infrastructure partner that will scale with you for the next decade. Reliability, scalability, transparent pricing, compliance, developer experience, roadmap alignment, and values all matter.
At Asima, they’re built into the platform from day one.
If you’re ready to put open banking at the heart of your business, contact us at asima@wonderful.co.uk.
