With January 1st, 2018 the PSD2 starts and a lot of people are really partying this topic. And I Am not sure if I want it. For me – and maybe I am a little bit oldschool – a bank is a bank and my money is something for me and not thought for sharing. For sharing I have payment proxies like a credit card or Paypal.
PSD what?
So what the heck is the PSD2? PSD2 is the Second Payment Services Directive, designed by the European Union. It bases on the PSD, the Directive on Payments Services (PSD) from 2007, which should create a single market for payments within the European Union. With some few rules it made what we know today as easy transferring from one country to another: the SEPA - Single Euro Payments Area. And this SEPA really helped clients and made a lot of things better, also on the fee side.
And PSD2, what, why?
So after a few years, new ideas came up to the European Union and they aimed to open bank accounts for third party services – always in favor of the little client. That means in short words that now a bank has to give access to a service provider if the client approves this access.
This opens room for several new services:
- A company can offer to optimize your telephon costs with simply allowing to access the bank account, gathering all information about telephon and offering you a new, better, cheaper service
- A shop will not longer ask you to fill in bank information and the goes to intermediary. The shop can directly access your account and get the money. This is known under the label Application Programming Interface. No need to pay yourself, they do it.
- If you have several accounts at several banks you can allow a service provider to bundle all this information in one app for you. This called Account Information Service Provider. No need to check all three but one app.
Please have a look here at "Sepa for Corporates" a good and short explanation.
They lived happily ever after?
For the banks is chance and problem in one shell. Banks can start to become financial superagents or just deliver information. But I as client, I worry about this. Why? Very easy. Today you buy something and you pay with your proxy credit card or Paypal. If something is not correct with the goods or whatever, you get your money back very easily. Tomorrow the dealer access in the second you push the button your accounts, no matter if he has sent the goods or is even thinking about sending. So no security for the buyer. And then once you gave the permission, who says the dealer is not using this access fraudulently? And who says this dealer will never be hacked and someone from bad country will take your money? But if you don’t give them the permission to access your account, I bet we have to pay extra fees to use credit cards. Than I am worse off as before thanks to regulation
Stay tuned
Yours K-Street6 Team