Banking – Page 2 – FinTech and Blockchain Law Watch

Mastercard assists Open Banking

Jun 07 2018

On 13 January 2018 the second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) became law across the European Union, leading to Open Banking. For background information, please see EU oversight on payments and Open Banking.

Mastercard announced on 5 June that it is launching a suite of services to help banks and FinTech companies navigate the Open Banking environment. The programme seeks to address the liability issues of banks sharing their data with third parties and to help startups to better communicate with their banking partners. For banks, Mastercard is building a pan-European directory of verified and legitimate third party providers, backed by a fraud monitoring service and dispute resolution mechanism. Startups in turn will be provided with a ‘connectivity hub’ that will help third parties establish and maintain communication with banks.

The new services will be launched first during a pilot phase in early 2019, with the UK and Poland being a particular priority, before being rolled out across Europe later that year.

Australian Open Banking Developments

Feb 09 2018

By Jim Bulling and Edwin Tan

The Australian Government has today released a report into Open Banking in Australia that sets out recommendations in relation to the method of implementation and proposed timelines. Some key points are:

the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) should be primarily responsible for overseeing standards-setting and accreditation, assisted by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner for privacy issues;
the obligation to share data should apply to all Australian Deposit-taking Institutions (ADIs) as well as reciprocally for other participating entities;
all ADIs should be automatically accredited to receive data. A risk-based accreditation standard should be used for non-ADIs (this would include most FinTech startups, for example);
the use of Application Programming Interfaces to facilitate data sharing; and
mandatory implementation of “read-only” access should be approximately 12 months from a final Government decision to implement Open Banking for the big 4 banks, with a further 12 months transitory period for other banks.

UK grants FinTech a banking licence – another tier of regulation?

Aug 21 2016

By Jim Bulling and Michelle Chasser

Has the age of the digital bank arrived in the UK? Following the authorisation of Atom Bank last year, 3 additional digital banks have been issued with banking licences by the UK Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) since May 2016.

These new licensees are the result of the PRA’s focus in recent years on lowering the barriers to entry for new banks and promote competition in the UK. As part of this focus, in 2013, PRA lowered the initial minimum capital requirements for Small Specialist Bank applicants to €1 million or £1 million (whichever is higher), plus a capital planning buffer (CPB). PRA and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) also launched a New Bank Start-up Unit in January 2016 to assist applicants with the authorisation process. Read More

EU Oversight on payments

Apr 18 2016

By Jacob Ghanty

The second EU Payment Services Directive is set to change the banking landscape in Europe. In the linked article, Jacob Ghanty describes some of the changes that PSD2 will bring about. This article was first published in inCOMPLIANCE, member publication of the International Compliance Association www.int-comp.org.

Tag:Banking