PSD2, Open Banking and Beyond

I’ve a number of great friends in the industry, and enjoy their company and contribution. One of those friends is Gijs Boudewijn, Chair of the Payment Systems Committee at the European Banking Federation who kindly quoted me in his recent presentation on Open Banking. He has also kindly allowed me to share his presentation with y’all here, so here it is.

It’s all about Open Banking, Open APIs, PSD2 and such like. What I find interesting here is that the more open banks become, the more chllaneges they have. We saw this the other day, with MPs asking banks to check their usage of cloud services and the fact that Amazon, Microsoft, Google and such like are becoming systemically important.

What gets notable in this equation is that banks are providing finance – that’s what they do – but they are now providing finance through technology – that’s how they do it. Meanwhile, banks’ leaders, their regulators and the government are predominantly still stuck in financial regulatory circles and not in technology circles.

This is the dramatic change we are seeing slowly but surely happening. Finance and technology is being integrated. It is no longer either, or, but and. This is the critical change we are seeing. FinTech is not Finance or Technology, but Finance and Technology, and the regulators, governments and bank leadership are slowly but surely realising this.

Enjoy.