Innovation in open banking: Lessons from the recent wave of payment institutions that have been authorised to provide payment initiation and account information services

The Revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) came into force in all EU member states in 2018. One stated aim of this legislation was to create room for innovations in technology and business models in order to give account holders more choices and more direct control regarding access to their account information and ways of initiating payment transactions. Although an evolving array of new services and service providers has emerged over the past few years, the market remains in an early phase of experimentation. Nevertheless, information about the range of newly licensed service providers in the EU, and their business models, provides some insights into how the market is evolving and how it is reacting to recent regulatory and market infrastructure changes introduced through the PSD2 and open banking architecture. This paper reviews the population of payment institutions that have recently obtained authorisation to provide payment initiation or account information services in the EEA. It examines the (1) geographic reach, (2) company origins and investors, and (3) business function of these new actors to provide early insights into the changing economics of banking and payments.