The Dimensions of PSD2

There are different strategies for banks to deal with the PSD2 Directive. Some banks see PSD2 as a directive to simply comply with and to provide secure access to their customers’ data to third party payment service providers (TPP), whereas other banks see the potential beyond PSD2. These banks will become TPPs themselves. They enhance their offering with additional API services to open new sources of revenue by providing new business models, and to generate more value for their customers.

Thus, banks need different technical solutions for their respective strategies. CoCoNet’s latest product developments offer solutions for the major strategic dimensions of PSD2. These are:

Firstly, the ‘PSD2 Enabler’, which supports banks in fulfilling legal requirements, and secondly, the ‘PSD2 Hub’ for connecting and unifying external PSD2 APIs, as well as providing further value to the customers with additional Open API services.

“Our PSD2 Enabler helps banks to quickly fulfil all legal requirements of the PSD2 Directive. We took great care to ensure that the product can be seamlessly integrated into the banks’ existing software landscapes,” explains Dr. Christian Schmidt, CEO at CoCoNet. He points out that the PSD2 Enabler already supports all relevant security mechanisms. The system enables the connection to internal bank systems for fetching and providing necessary data, the handling of connectivity data and certificates for TPP validation as well as logging and auditing processes.

For banks that see PSD2 as a strategic offering, CoCoNet recommends the PSD2 Hub. The hub enables multi-banking capabilities for a bank’s channels via a unified front-end API. “Based on PSD2 APIs, more and more customers in the retail and commercial sector will make use of multi-banking or other FinTech services. Our central hub can connect numerous API sets of various banks. We take a unifying approach to reduce the complexity for integration and maintenance, and to save costs in development and operations,” says Dr. Schmidt.

New services allow new business models. The MULTIVERSA PSD2 Solutions can be enhanced to provide additional value to the customers. From front-ends, that bring PSD2-related or other Open API services into an appealing graphical user interface, to additional services based on a respective data storage to provide new business models to the customers.

CoCoNet’s PSD2 Solutions will also become part of the MULTIVERSA products. The easy fulfilment of the new legal obligations at a reasonable cost have – as it is typical for all CoCoNet products – a short time-to-market. The modular architecture offers banks high flexibility and opens many opportunities for new business as a third party provider.