Open banking has reached a turning point. While a number of countries have made significant strides in the journey to open finance over the last year, we wanted to know just how much the global open banking landscape is evolving.
To find out, Yapily’s Chief Commercial Officer, Iain McDougall, was joined by Forrester’s Principal Analyst Jacob Morgan, Intuit’s Head of UK Financial Institutions and Enterprise Platforms Neil Oates and Volt’s Chief Operating Officer Steffen Vollert.
As leaders, they’ve implemented some of the most innovative open banking solutions in their industries. Together, they discussed open banking’s global state of play, where the opportunities lie, and much more.
Missed it? We’ve summarised our 5 key learnings from the webinar below.
1) There’s been a step-change in payment use cases
Account-to-account payments are taking off
Once considered an alternative payment method, account-to-account payments are set to become mainstream. Debit cards still reign supreme (for now…), but payment platforms are equipped to extract card details and are in a good position to encourage customers in the payment flow to migrate to account-to-account payments.
Our panellists predict that large-value, infrequent payments will be a key area of interest. They pointed to the travel sector as a pioneer in the space, where banks have recently invested in account-to-account payments for the Air Transport Association (IATA). Another example: Emirates Airlines launching Emirates Pay in partnership with Deutsche Bank last year.
There’s growing activity in the B2B space
The old-fashioned way of sending and receiving business payments is over. As our panellists pointed out, we’re starting to see banks daisy-chain their business solutions together to offer account-to-account payment initiation on top of Request to Pay.
The panel also pointed to a recent report by the OBIE which explored how connecting data with payment capabilities could help drive better efficiency in accounting. One example is the use of open banking to minimise tax overheads and reduce the effort that it takes to compile and file tax documentation.
2) The world’s ready for an open data economy
Open Energy and Open Health are on the agenda…
In 2019, Australia took a huge step toward an open economy by passing the Consumer Data Right (CDR) legislation. Now, the CDR is about to be applied to utilities, unlocking the power of Open Energy.
This mirrors Brazil, which has already advanced in open finance with its Joint Resolution for interoperability. Next on its agenda is Open Health, which will bring Brazilian healthcare data into an open data economy.
…But Europe still hasn’t caught up
The EU Commission is heading in the right direction with a series of consultations on PSD3, including a new, ambitious framework for open finance. But, the UK risks falling months behind as the OBIE slowly transitions into a new Future Entity.
Speaking of PSD3…
3) PSD2 has become old news as PSD3 emerges
While PSD2 achieved some of its objectives, it’s also created a rather fragmented landscape and created barriers in the journey to open finance. So, what does this mean for businesses trying to build pan-European solutions?
Where PSD2 got it wrong… PSD3 will get it right
As the EU Commission takes steps to move forward, PSD3 is beginning to materialise. Here’s what businesses can expect in the coming months.
- The EU Digital Finance Platform
- The framework for Open Finance
- The Digital Services Act package
- And of course, the eIDAS framework
4) While there’s been a lot of progress in the last year, there are still challenges to overcome
During the discussion, we ran a poll to find out what businesses’ biggest challenges are when unlocking European expansion. The top three that came out on top were the quality of open banking connectivity (30%), lack of API standardisation (24%), and a tie-up between inconsistent regulations and the end-user experience.
As the panel pointed out, while API uptime is great, payment conversion is even better. When faced with varying levels of open banking connectivity, those bank connections are worth little if they’re not reliable. This is particularly true when entering new markets.
But, as Neil added, when thinking about your business globally, you can’t just take what you do in the UK and apply it in another market. That’s when you need a connectivity specialist…
5) Yapily: powering innovation through open banking across industries
How Yapily is enabling these businesses to grow
When our panellists were asked why they choose Yapily, they referred to us as the AWS of open banking. As one of Europe’s leading open banking providers, Yapily ticks all the boxes when it comes to expanding into new markets.
Take our partnership with Intuit, for instance. By partnering with Yapily, they’ve been able to quickly scale their solution within Europe. With our single API, they’ve seamlessly connected to multiple banks which has enabled incredible growth.
And, as one of Yapily’s early adopters, Volt attributes our successful partnership to our consistent drive for expansion and internationalisation.
Get in touch to learn more about how Yapily can power your product innovation. Exploring your options? Check out our Open Banking Buyer’s Guide to understand how to vet providers and choose the best partner.
