Smart Payment Gateway - a gateway to the future of financial solutions
Open banking
As a concept, open banking started to be contextualized over the last two years roughly and will reach its peak this year with the deadline for the implementation of PSD2. From that moment on, after the banks will open their customers’ accounts through API’s (application program interface), a wide range of opportunities for the tech providers will open up as well.
Berlin Group
Is an initiative group of standards and harmonization constituted by some European banks that first met in Berlin in 2004. The group now releases standards (consultative or mandatory) for the banks to become PSD2 compliant. It is more of an API framework, than a single standard procedure as is the Open Banking UK.
Open Banking UK
Is an initiative group as well, creating standards for PSD2 compliancy, composed by 9 UK Banks.The standardizations of the two groups are however closely aligned.
The context
The PSD2 EU Directive stipulates that certified TPPs must be able to access APIs in a non-discriminatory way and without a contract. This means that, after the test phases pass, the banks must provide TPPs access to their customers’ real data. In this context, Berlin Group launched NextGenPSD2, a framework including all specifications of compliancy, which is being constantly updated; and also, the Implementation Support Program (NISP), that aims to generate synergies in implementation and testing for all participants.
The Open Banking Institute has mainly the same tactical approach, providing implementation standards through OBIE (Open Banking Implementation Entity).
But the discussions go beyond that at this point. Openbanking became an ecosystem including the Directive’s stipulations regardless of groups, standard implementations and authorities. This matter started to be viewed more extensive than just the openbankig concept, through the open data economy as a whole. Tech providers and other players could open up as well, and that’s where the supporters of PSD3 aim to go.
This is now the European direction that openbanking takes and the vision for what might happen next.
The vision
Smart Fintech’s solution - SmartPG the Hub - is offering standardized and unified APIs to eliminate the complexity of connecting to each individual bank, but also to create new opportunities for other accelerators to be created and implemented as well. SmartPG captures the extensive knowledge of IT Smart Systems acquired from the PSD2 implementations, aligned with both NextGenPSD2 and Open Banking UK Standards.
But what if all these were to be opened to anyone to contribute? What if all these were to be reachable to anyone to innovate? What if all these were to be transformed in a community of ideas that would help the financial institutions all around Europe to answer to all kind of customer needs?
Cristian Barbu, Managing Partner and IT Smart Systems Founder has put into words the company’s vision for SmartPG.
‘I consider the key value of SmartPG to be the know-how embedded into it, our long-time experience as an IT service provider in the banking industry, combined with the deep understanding of Open Bank Institute and Berlin Group specifications. We are aiming to innovate at a European level now, not just locally. And we seem to succeed, winning the Open Banking Institute Hackathon last year being just the beginning. We made all these possible by a strong collaboration with international banks, with the working groups that elaborate standards (like the Open Banking Institute or the Berlin Group) and with our technological partners. That being said, maybe the most revolutionary feature of SmartPG is the development of an open platform available for all Fintech companies. We are prepared to make available to them our know-how, so this platform is set to accelerate innovation opened by the PSD2. We are hence committed to lower the entry barrier in the PSD2 space, to make it as accessible for startups as for the technology giants.’
Therefore, the vision of SmartPG is to take advantage of the trend set by the EU regulations and unleash innovation through collaboration.
Stay tuned and LET US BOOST YOUR FINTECH EXPERIENCE.