This weekend's launch of Open Banking is being hampered by the fact that five out of the nine major lenders involved in the scheme have been forced to ask for more time to meet the January 13 deadline.

Nine UK banks - Barclays, Lloyds, Santander, Danske, HSBC, RBS, Bank of Ireland, Nationwide and AIBG - are required to comply with the new rules but only AIGB, Nationwide, Lloyds and Danske have met the deadline; the rest have all been granted extra time to comply with the rules by the Competition & Markets Authority, ranging from a few weeks to up to a year.

The Government has branded the initiative a “technological revolution”, claiming it will boost competition and aid consumers who can pick and choose from numerous different providers rather than taking all of their services from a single provider.

However, a new survey by Accenture found that two-thirds of UK consumers said they would not share their financial data with third parties because of privacy concerns and a separate poll by Which? suggested 92% of the British public have not even heard of Open Banking.

Not that you would know Barclays was stalling if you looked at its website, where it makes no mention of the delay. It posted: “[We] will launch our Open Banking solution in 2018, allowing you to not only share data with other providers but importantly, to view your accounts from other providers conveniently and securely through your Barclays Mobile Banking app.”

Following a step by step format, the online post emphasises that the customer is in control of their own data, and that explicit permission will be required before sharing is possible.

“You’ll be able to give permission for your bank to share your account transaction data securely with other companies, known as third-party providers (TPPs). These might be other registered banks, building societies or price comparison websites,” it added.