NAB Acquires UK Account-to-Account Fintech Banked to Expand Open Banking Payments

National Australia Bank (NAB) has acquired UK fintech Banked, taking full ownership of the London-based account-to-account (A2A) payments platform it has backed and used as a customer since 2024. Financial terms of the deal, announced on 14 May 2026, were not disclosed.

Banked, founded in 2018 by Brad Goodall, operates a Pay by Bank and payments orchestration platform built on open banking rails. The technology lets merchants pull funds directly from a customer's bank account in real time, bypassing the card networks and the interchange costs that come with them. The group of Banked entities will continue to operate as wholly owned subsidiaries in the near term, with NAB planning to integrate the platform into its own technology stack over the coming months.

For NAB, this is less an opportunistic deal than the culmination of a multi-year relationship. The bank's venture arm, NAB Ventures, invested in Banked across funding rounds in 2022, 2023 and 2024, holding a minority stake before moving to acquire the rest of the company. NAB also began routing business customers through Banked's technology in 2024, giving both sides a working sense of how the platform performs at scale inside an established bank.

Shane Conway, NAB Group Executive for Transformation, framed the deal as part of a wider shift in Australia's payments mix. "Pay by Bank is part of a broader shift in Australia's payments landscape toward real-time, account-to-account options that sit alongside cards and digital wallets," he said. "Customers expect making payments to be fast, easy and reliable, and Banked helps us deliver that."

The strategic logic is straightforward. Australia's New Payments Platform has matured into a credible rail for real-time consumer and business transfers, and merchants on both sides of the Pacific are looking for cheaper alternatives to card acceptance. By owning Banked outright, NAB gains direct control over a checkout product it can offer to its own merchant base, while also retaining a platform with a global footprint and a developer-led go-to-market that bank-built tooling rarely matches.

Banked CEO Brad Goodall said the deal would extend the platform's reach. "The Banked team have worked hard to build a globally proven payments platform focused on the modern demands of developers and merchants of all sizes and scale," he said. "Having the backing of NAB will allow the platform to reach more customers."

For Banked's existing customers - which include large retailers and payment service providers across the UK, Europe and the United States - the immediate change is one of ownership rather than product. The longer-term question is how a bank-owned A2A platform navigates relationships with rival banks whose rails it depends on, particularly outside Australia. NAB's bet is that owning the orchestration layer matters more than where the underlying account sits.

The acquisition lands at a moment when account-to-account payments are finally moving from open banking demo to mainstream merchant option, helped by regulatory pressure on card fees and the rollout of instant payment rails in nearly every major market. NAB has now positioned itself as one of the few global banks to own its A2A checkout outright, rather than rent it.