Pay by Bank: the Open Banking payment solution that is changing how UK and Ireland car dealerships get paid
Pay by Bank: Open Banking Payments for Car Dealerships
Pay by Bank lets customers pay straight from their bank account using the banking app they already use. On a £30,000 vehicle deposit, it removes card fees and avoids the usual three‑day clearance period, replacing both with an instant, biometric‑approved transfer.
Pay by Bank also simplifies the dealership workflow. The customer approves the payment with Face ID or a fingerprint, the funds move over Faster Payments, and the dealership sees confirmation immediately. In a sector built on high‑value, high‑friction transactions, that level of speed and certainty carries weight.
Why Pay by Bank is the smarter route for vehicle purchases
Card processing was designed for a world of low-value, high-frequency retail. Car dealerships are the opposite: fewer transactions, much higher values, and a lot more at stake if something goes wrong.
Three problems show up again and again in dealership finance teams:
- Card scheme and interchange fees eat into margin on every deposit and full vehicle payment, and those fees scale with the transaction. A £500 service invoice and a £40,000 vehicle purchase may cost the same percentage, but the second one hurts a lot more.
- Card-not-present sales, common for remote purchases, deposits taken over the phone, and click-to-pay checkouts, carry real fraud and chargeback exposure. A disputed high-value transaction can take weeks to resolve and ties up cash in the meantime.
- Manual reconciliation between the showroom, the finance system, and the payment gateway adds admin hours that a lean dealership finance team doesn't have spare.
Open banking addresses all three at once, which is why UK regulators have actively pushed its adoption and why more than 31 million open banking payments were made in the UK in March 2025 alone, according to Open Banking Ltd.
How Pay by Bank works inside a dealership's payment flow
Prommt lets automotive retailers send a secure, branded payment request by SMS, email or chat by a shareable link, whether the customer is reserving a vehicle, paying a deposit, or settling the full purchase price. The customer opens the request, chooses to pay by bank, and authenticates through their own banking app. No account details change hands, and the payment settles instantly with real-time confirmation on the dealership side.
The part that matters most for automotive finance teams is orchestration. A dealership doesn’t have to choose between card and bank payments. Prommt lets you run both on one platform and set automated rules that present the right method for the transaction, for example capping card payments at £500 and routing anything above that threshold straight to Pay by Bank. Smaller service payments still go through by card if that’s what a customer prefers, while five and six-figure vehicle payments move onto the lower-cost, lower-risk rail automatically.
That single change, tested across live dealership groups, is where the biggest savings show up.
The results automotive dealerships are already seeing
Toomey Motor Group, an Essex dealership trading since 1932, has grown Pay by Bank from around 5% of payments to 40% of payments, taking in over £5 million in a single month through the channel.
Motorpoint, one of the UK’s largest independent car retailers, has saved more than £100,000 in under eight months by reducing merchant fees and simplifying how it collects payments.
Wilsons Auctions, whose payment mix skews heavily toward high-value transactions, found that Pay by Bank removed a substantial layer of cost while integrating directly into its website, solving its card fee problem and its remote payment problem in a single move.
What to look for in a car dealership payment solution?
Not every open banking provider is built for the realities of vehicle sales. When evaluating a payment partner, dealerships in the UK and Ireland should check for:
- Orchestration. The right platform runs card and Pay by Bank side by side and lets you set the rules for which one applies, rather than forcing an all-or-nothing switch.
- Instant settlement with real-time visibility. Faster Payments confirmation should show up in the platform immediately, so sales staff and finance teams both know a deal is done without checking a bank statement.
- Compliance built in. PCI DSS, GDPR, and strong customer authentication under 3DS2 should be handled by the platform, not bolted on afterward.
- Fast, low-disruption onboarding. A solution that takes months to integrate across multiple sites and departments defeats the point. Prommt's enterprise dealership clients have typically gone live in two to three weeks.
- A branded, trustworthy checkout. Customers paying tens of thousands of pounds need a payment page that looks and feels like it belongs to the dealership, not a generic third-party form.
FAQs
What is Open Banking - Pay by Bank?
Pay by Bank is a payment method that uses open banking rails to move money directly from a customer’s bank account to a merchant’s account, authenticated through the customer’s own banking app rather than a card network.
Is Pay by Bank secure for high-value car purchases?
Yes. Authentication happens inside the customer’s regulated banking app using bank-grade security, and the merchant never handles or stores card details, which removes the fraud and chargeback exposure that comes with card-not-present sales.
How much can a dealership save by switching high-value payments to Pay by Bank?
Savings depend on transaction volume and current card fee rates, but dealerships routing high-value payments through Pay by Bank avoid scheme and interchange fees entirely on those transactions. Motorpoint, for example, saved over £100,000 in under eight months.
Do dealerships have to choose between card payments and open banking?
No. Platforms like Prommt run both on the same system, with automated rules that decide which method to present based on transaction value, so lower-value payments can still go through by card while high-value ones route to Pay by Bank.
How long does it take to set up Pay by Bank across a dealership group?
Enterprise dealership clients on Prommt have typically gone live in two to three weeks, including rollout across multiple locations and departments.