What does the landscape of online banking solutions look like in the world of access to the account?
I think with PSD2 we are going in the right direction, but I think it falls short of what banks and customers really need. After two years of battling it out, a compromise between banks and third party providers was achieved. But the compromise is not good enough for banks, nor for the third party providers, like account information services and payment initiation services.
If I am using online banking on my PC or mobile, I want full access to all of my account details, and not just my payments account. We are also talking mortgage, pension, and savings accounts here. But within most solutions only the payments account is included, and that renders the services often incomplete. So this provides a basis for third party service providers to come up with solutions that are more comprehensive and go across banks as well, which is far more useful than an individual bank’s solutions. For example, if I have accounts at three different banks, today I have to use three different individual online banking services.
Using an overarching AIS (Account Information Services) in the future would be great, but even more so if it can show me more than just my payment accounts, which would be an incomplete picture. So I hope that banks will go beyond what is stipulated in PSD2, and give access to accounts all-round to third parties. Whilst they do not have to do this by PSD2 standards, they should want to do it for their customers.
Do you expect that banks will open up access to all of the accounts?
Yes, I do actually. I think all the forward-looking banks will voluntarily go beyond just following PSD2. There are examples visible already. There are a few banks who have started using APIs that are much broader than what is foreseen within PSD2. Or look at the UK: they are opening up the banking world in a much broader way than PSD2.
In the past too, when it came to unbundling infrastructure, the UK had taken the lead very often, be it railways, or telecoms, or electricity, or what have you. They were always first to privatize it and open up the value added services side to competition and new players who could use the underlying infrastructure to propel it forward. And that is exactly what they are planning to do with banks in the UK now, too. I think that the rest of the world would be well-advised looking at that as well in the not too distant future.
Does PPRO have similar plans for similar online banking solutions? How do you see your role in this new space?
Not sure if we will provide such online banking solutions, but there could well be a role for us in providing access to the bank accounts. All the major online bank payment networks in Europe, like iDEAL, Giropay, MyBank, EPS, P24, etc. are connected to our platform. So via our platform a third party provider can already access more bank accounts than via anyone else in Europe. And also from a bank’s perspective: you do not really want to start integrating with all future third-party providers individually. Take iDEAL, for example, if you are an issuing bank in that scheme, it is easier to provide access via that route, instead of creating a new one.
Therefore, I think we are in a very good position to provide, as I like to call it, an “access-to-the-account gateway service”, bridging the gap between all the third party service providers on one side, and banks on the other.
About Ralf Ohlhausen
Ralf Ohlhausen, MSc in mathematics and Master of Telecommunications Business, has over 25 years’ experience in ecommerce, financial services, mobile telecommunications and IT. Before joining PPRO Group, he was President Europe at SafetyPay. Other management positions on his international career path took him to Digicel, O2, British Telecom and Mannesmann-Kienzle. At PPRO, Ralf is responsible for increasing PPRO’s global reach, focusing in particular on the addition of new payment choices to the company’s portfolio.
About PPRO Group
Cross-border e-payment specialist, PPRO Group, (PPRO) removes the complexity of international ecommerce payments by acquiring, collecting and processing an extensive range of alternative payments methods for Payment Service Providers (PSPs) under one contract, through one platform and one single integration. PPRO supports international payment methods across more than 100 countries, allowing PSPs to expand their merchants’ ecommerce reach, arrange hassle-free collection and achieve higher conversion rates.
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