Open Banking and Payment Services Directive
Geography: Emea · Europe · Europe
The Payment Services Directive (PSD2, 2018; PSD3 under development) required European banks to provide open APIs allowing authorized third parties to access customer account data and initiate payments. This regulatory mandate created Europe's open banking ecosystem — a market structure where bank data is portable and fintech companies can build services on top of existing banking infrastructure.
The impact is structural: thousands of fintech companies now offer services (budgeting apps, payment initiation, account aggregation, lending) that were previously impossible without bank cooperation. Companies like Plaid, TrueLayer, and Tink built businesses entirely on the regulatory foundation of PSD2.
The Brussels Effect applies: countries from Australia to Brazil to India have implemented similar open banking mandates, following the European template. The UK (post-Brexit) built on PSD2 with its Open Banking Standard, which has become a reference implementation for other jurisdictions. Europe created the regulatory technology that is now the global standard for financial data portability.
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