In Switzerland, Hypothekarbank Lenzburg and Postfinance proclaimed to be open toward an adoption of the EU rule on open banking. Most rivals however remained highly skeptical.
The Swiss Bankers Association lent its voice to the majority and published its view about PSD2. The industry group gave following reasons for its rejection:
No need for action: Swiss banks already offer a wide range of innovative solutions. Forcing the industry to open their interfaces will lead to a competitive distortion to the disadvantage of banks.
PSD2 won’t primarily help startups, but mainly global tech giants. They would get almost unfettered access to customer data – a dangerous development that opens for new security breaches.
Banks are facing extra costs in relation to security and compliance, which customers would have to come up for.
The association also said that the new regulatory framework still contained unresolved issues, with data collection as the main question mark. The commission of the EU was at loggerheads with the European Banking Authority (EBA) about the use of so-called screen scraping.
While the commission wants to allow the so-called screen scraping, EBA intends to introduce a separate interface with strong client authentication measures. The solution won’t however be ready before May 2019.
The Swiss bankers also believe that PSD2 is an economic experiment with substantial risks. If payment service providers for instance got full access to electronic account data, they would be able to see all accounts and deposits of clients.
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