In theory, access to open banking data in Europe is free and businesses should be able to connect to official bank APIs, access user-consented account data, and start building new products and applications for their customers — all of which is mandated by PSD2. In practice, „open banking in Europe is still a hot mess,” according to Nordigen, an authorized AISP in 28 European countries.
Navigating between PSD2 licences and certificates, connecting to the regulated open APIs, and deciphering third party account aggregators and tech startups is time consuming and expensive. Accessing the free data today is taxed. There’s no real “try before you buy” with open banking in Europe today. It’s “pay to play,” and it’s less than ideal.
Nordigen is introducing free access to PSD2 data across Europe with our latest Account Information product. Account Information is a free API that connects to major European banks and provides regulated, consented access to user banking information from a few months to several years. As part of the free offering, Nordigen, an authorized AISP, will also offer 90-day connectivity to user’s bank accounts with background refresh up to four times a day.
„This means no more upfront commitments and no hidden costs, just free access to PSD2 data,” the company said.
There are a variety of incumbents that are expanding their services outside the direct PSD2 scope by creating custom banking APIs. While these are valuable services, they are costly to build and maintain, causing incumbents to charge a lot of money for access to open banking data.
Nordigen, however, connects to free regulated PSD2 APIs that are constantly improving. This allows us to have a significantly less expensive technology stack while reducing any friction for businesses to connect to open banking.
„This means no more custom APIs, no screen-scraping and no storing of user credentials, just free access to PSD2 data,” the company explained.
To finance free access to open banking data, Nordigen provides analytics services on top of bank data, including Transaction Categorisation and Insights.
„Since launching in 2016, we’ve been among the industry leaders in building solutions for turning raw transaction data into actionable insights, and our Premium and Enterprise services are already used by some of the most innovative banks, lenders, and fintechs in Europe. For businesses that will want to extract more value from their free PSD2 data, Nordigen is the best choice for data analytics,” said Rolands Mesters, CEO & Co-Founder Nordigen.
„With the launch of our free Account Information product, we’re hoping to change how open banking is done across Europe. We may be the first to launch a “freemium open banking” service but we don’t plan to be the last, as we hope to see a similar approach being taken across all countries where open banking regulation is introduced. This means no more barriers, just free access to open banking data,” Mesters added.
Banking 4.0 – „how was the experience for you”
„So many people are coming here to Bucharest, people that I see and interact on linkedin and now I get the change to meet them in person. It was like being to the Football World Cup but this was the World Cup on linkedin in payments and open banking.”
Many more interesting quotes in the video below:
