Open Banking provides a secure way for businesses and consumers to allow software providers access to their financial information. Its application in the private rented sector (PRS) will allow letting agents to process payments more efficiently.
Through Open Banking, agentOS will allow agents to automate payments and improve the tenant to agent to landlord payment journey, which they say will be help agents reduce the amount of out of hours payment work they are having to do.
Many letting agency owners are in a catch-22 because of the growth of the PRS. As they take on more properties, they have to spend more time dealing with rent payments and contractors' bills.
Glyn Trott, managing director of agentOS, said:
"We see what times of day agents are doing additional payment administration work. They are either getting up really early or, if the day gets away from them, they are logging in at 10pm or 11pm to manually manage payments."
"This is particularly the case for owners of independent agencies who like to keep in control of finances, but we've also seen the founders of larger agencies - or someone senior who is highly trusted - doing the same."
He says the automation Open Banking allows means agents will no longer have to manually manage payments, while the overall process is significantly faster.
According to agentOS, agents who use its Open Banking solution will benefit from a 'more seamless' online banking solution.
"Most agents currently use BACS to process payments. However, it is quite an old and slow system which can take up to three days to process a payment if it's made to another bank," Trott explains.
"Online banking is quicker but requires agents to process payments manually every day. Open Banking is changing the landscape and allows agents to benefit from automated online banking, which is vastly superior to BACS."
He adds: "Open Banking is live - it's true innovation and a great challenger to the banking status quo."
