Opportunity: PSD 2

The impetus behind PSD 2 was to improve the level of consumer protection in place, but mainly to increase competition and facilitate innovation in financial services.

PSD 2 effectively opens the market for new entrants – third party providers (TPP) – by introducing two brand new services:

• Payment initiation service – third party providers (‘Payment Initiation Service Providers’ - PISP) will enable clients to initiate payments from their payment accounts without actually accessing their bank’s online channels, and
• Account information aggregation service – third party providers (‘Account Information Service Providers’ - AISP) will provide customers with a consolidated information on their various payment accounts held with multiple banks.

Banks will be forced under PSD 2 to open access to their clients payment accounts data to third party providers via APIs (Application Programming Interface). This obligation exposes banks that will decide for pure compliance only to the potential risk of customer disintermediation. Banks keen to benefit from the new regulation and interested in rolling out new added value multi-banking services will have to consider taking on actively the AISP and/or PISP roles.

In terms of detailed parameters of PSD 2, the European Banking Authority drafted the regulatory technical standards covering various technical issues, particularly the issue of strong customer authentication. These RTS will become effective 18 months from their adoption by the European Commission, on 14 September 2019.