Last week the NextGenPSD2 Conference was held in Berlin, as part of the Berlin Group's public market consultation on a single API standard under the revised Payments Services Directive (PSD2). The Berlin Group – an EU payments standards harmonisation initiative – is due to complete the public consultation on 17 November 2017. The conference presented discussions on how PSD2 will affect the banking system, how it will achieve simplified requirements for access to accounts (XS2A) and enable third party payment service providers (TPPs) to deliver innovative solutions to customers using application programming interfaces (APIs).

Speaking at the event, Ralf Jacob, part of the European Commission's Directorate-General for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union, gave an update on the current status of PSD2. In particular he discussed the timelines for the regulatory technical standards (RTS) and explained the approach regarding APIs.

This blog by Vasco's Frederik Mennes says: “Regarding timelines, Mr. Jacob explained that the the text of the RTS is ready, and that it is currently being translated. The RTS is expected to be published around 25 November. In order to become official the RTS needs to be published in the Official Journal of the European Union, which should happen in late February 2018. The RTS will go into effect 18 months later, in August 2019.”

And it seems that the Commission has also found a solution to the disagreement over so-called 'screen-scraping', or direct access to customer bank account data by authorised TPPs. The fintech community and European banks clashed over this, with one side claiming that banning the practice of direct access would not be in the spirit of the new PSD2 regulation, while the banks raised security and authorisation concerns. For more detail see: Fintechs and banks clash over ‘screen scraping’

According to Vasco's Frederik Mennes, the Commission might have solved the problem by creating a new industry body consisting of representatives from both banks and TPPs, to determine whether an API-based interface is adequate. Mennes writes: “All in all, the approach proposed by the Commission largely favors API-based interfaces, and tries to do away with the practice of screen scraping, which is long overdue.”

It now remains to be seen whether this proposed step will be confirmed when the RTS for PSD2 are published on 25 November.