The latest edition of Oaklen Consulting's Industry Watch highlights the adoption of Open Banking around the world.

The Basel Committee consolidates the state of play of Open Banking and API approaches worldwide. It highlights the differences in scope (product and pricing, account information, fund transfer) and philosophy (regulatory, incentive, market initiative). He considers that with the PSD2, Europe is one of the areas that has the most advanced framework to foster the development of a rich ecosystem.

OBIE presents the standardisation, governance and steering framework put in place in Great Britain beyond the obligations of the PSD2 to "force" the market to implement Open Banking and to resolve operational difficulties as early as possible. The document also presents the value-added services, beyond account aggregation and payment initiation, on which OBIE is working from 2020 to take on an "Open Finance" dimension. This raises questions about the ability to obtain this leverage effect on a European scale as long as Open Banking remains optional and subject to the goodwill of the market.

An EBA report highlights how the interpretation of the EU Directives in each local legislation is an obstacle to the emergence of native European payment services. This relates primarily to the fact that the qualification of a digital activity as cross-border or not is country-specific: thus there is no "stable" European framework to know whether a digital activity must respect only the law of its country of origin or also the law of all countries of use. The EBA recommends that the European Commission takes a position to "foster" the emergence of European digital financial services.

For more information and the complete watch: contacteznous@oaklen.eu