Comment: Fintech Manifesto Against EBA’s Decision to Outlaw Screen Scraping

Lu Zurawski, consumer payments practice lead EMEA, ACI Worldwide comments:

“This manifesto is a high-profile attempt by mature Fintech businesses to protest against new rules by the European Banking Authority that would ban the practice of screen scraping of customer data from online banking interfaces.

“The Fintech coalition argues that the EBA is wrong to think that screen-scraping techniques are not safe, secure and perfectly reasonable. This sharp assertion will generate lively debates and lobbying over the coming months before the PSD2 Regulatory Technical Standards are formally adopted by the European Commission.

“It will be interesting to see this debate resolved. It’s hard to work out with whom to have more sympathy – with the banks who face the existential threat of new competitors getting easy access to their systems? Or with the Fintech companies who face big costs of retooling if their screen scraping techniques – which they’d prefer to be known by the more cuddly term ‘Direct Access’ – become outlawed. One can sense irony (and even a hint of Schadenfreude), that the mature end of the Fintech industry faces its own crisis unless it adopts the modern API-based techniques used by more recent competitors.

“It’s worth remembering that the PSD2 initiative has been created for consumers with the aim to simplify and secure the way we deal with our finances. But most of us still seem to value security above all. So perhaps the EBA has got the balance right in terms of encouraging a competitive financial services industry.