Why Open Banking is Ireland's Biggest UX Opportunity

Open banking — the regulatory framework that requires banks to share customer data with authorised third parties via APIs — has been live in Ireland for several years. The technology works. The regulatory framework is in place. The market penetration is still far below its potential.

The reason is simple: the UX of open banking is, in most implementations, not good enough.

The An Post Money Manager Example

The An Post Money Manager feature — built in partnership with Tink — is one of the best examples of open banking UX done well that I've worked on. The feature allows customers to link accounts from AIB, Bank of Ireland, Permanent TSB, Revolut, and N26 alongside their An Post account, and get a unified view of all their balances and spending.

The design challenge was significant. Linking a bank account through an open banking flow involves navigating to your other bank's authentication interface, approving data sharing, and returning to the originating app — a multi-step flow that crosses app boundaries and involves explicit consent to sharing financial data.

At every point where a user might ask 'why are you asking me to do this?', the design needed to provide a clear, honest answer in plain language. Not technical jargon about API permissions. Plain language: 'This lets us show you your Bank of Ireland balance alongside your An Post balance in one place. We never store your Bank of Ireland login details.'

The Broader Opportunity

Open banking's most underutilised capability is financial insight — the ability to help customers understand their spending patterns across all their accounts, identify savings opportunities, and make better financial decisions. This is the category that Money Manager sits in, and it's the category that most open banking implementations have not yet delivered on well.

The gap is not technical. It's design. Turning transaction data into actionable insight requires understanding what people actually want to know about their money, what motivates them to change their financial behaviour, and how to present complex information in a way that feels relevant rather than overwhelming.

What Good Looks Like

• Explain the benefit before asking for consent. 'To show you X, we need Y' — always in that order.
• Make the data sharing scope explicit and specific. Vague consent language destroys trust.
• Surface insights proactively, not just in response to deliberate exploration. Push the right information to the right person at the right moment.
• Make disconnecting accounts as easy as connecting them. Control builds trust.

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