Will the European Banking Authority (EBA) offer an actionable path, or should the industry start collaborating on Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) in order to realise the regulatory vision of third party access to payment accounts?

In parallel, the dynamic world of fintech players is moving on and looking for ways to integrate banking services into their own innovative applications. In the coming years we will see a fundamentally different banking industry, i.e. an industry that will need to embrace a more ‘open’ character to differentiate.

On the one hand a basic form of open account access will become mandatory (PSD2), while on the other hand opportunities for banks emerge to transform themselves into a ‘digital platform’ for their customers and suppliers, effectively creating a financial services ecosystem consuming own and third party applications through the bank’s platform. For sure customers will be more in control of how they wish to use and interact with their payment account, i.e. through applications provided by their bank or by third parties.

For credit cards and direct debits this is already common practice when we connect our cards and IBANs to apps, e.g. Apple Pay, Uber and AndroidPay. PSD2 will expand this feature to the non-card infrastructure, which stimulates the sector to innovate further in terms of security, digital identity, user experience and applications.

Last but not least, PSD2 Payment Initiation and Account Information will trigger ‘non-payment’ applications as well. This will require a cross-silo, multidisciplinary approach within banks to economise on the opportunities of PSD2. EBAday 2016, our flagship conference, will address the brave new world for payments in all its facets.