Open banking (PSD2)

The second Payment Services Directive introduced open banking in the EU. A bank must provide licensed account information service providers with access to the customer's account data, and payment initiation service providers with the ability to start a payment, whenever the customer consents. Access runs through secure APIs with strong customer authentication, and the consent for account data has to be renewed periodically.

For bookkeeping this means the bank statement can flow into accounting software automatically, in near real time, across every bank in the EU, without sharing passwords. Providers are supervised by national authorities and appear in the EBA register. The successor rules PSD3 and the Payment Services Regulation will refine the framework. Kontevia uses a licensed open banking provider to import transactions for reconciliation and never stores the user's bank credentials.