Digital inclusion: how Open Banking helps

Partelya Consulting just released the new edition of its “Payment and digital inclusion: state of the art” report, led by Andrea Toucinho, Study Director. She interviewed many industry experts, including Ramzi Dziri (Head of Product, LUXHUB) and Anne-Sophie Morvan (Chief Commercial Officer, LUXHUB): they discussed digital inclusion in Luxembourg, and of course, Open Banking.

In the introduction of the report, Andrea Toucinho highlights that with the development of electronic transactions and the discussions around cashless transactions/societies, the debate around digital inclusion becomes more and more significant/relevant, and even very necessary.

“We see a lot of innovation in the payment sphere, notably with contactless payments that have increased heavily in the last few years, yet, some consumers/users are still excluded from the transformations linked to digital,” says the author.

And several key questions remain open: how can we integrate populations excluded from digital? What are member states doing to include them? What about the sharing of information and education?

Luxembourg, a mature country in terms of digital payments

As explained by Ramzi, “the maturity in terms of the use of digital tools was already important in 2019, before the Covid-19 crisis. Credit cards were the favorite means of payment, online or in physical stores”. He also notes that mobile payment was also popular for certain use cases, thanks to a local solution developed in collaboration with several banks.

He adds: “In Luxembourg, digital payment is rooted in the country’s culture and society. The topic of digital competencies is key as some segments of the population might feel/be excluded. One can notably think of the elderly, but also some youngsters”.

Anne-Sophie Morvan then underlines that information and education are tackled in a large way, not just around payments. “It’s about finance in general: several programs have been launched by the Ministry of Digital, and the banks and bankers association, ABBL, along with the CSSF (local financial sector authority) have worked on specific training sessions and programs”, she highlights.

Ramzi agrees and notes that many of those training offers and initiatives around digital inclusion in general are widely shared and communicated to the entire population.

LUXHUB – and Open Banking – can bridge the digital gap

LUXHUB, as an Open Banking pioneer, is also working on this topic by favoring user-centric approaches. The first concrete example is to enable users to pay via Open Banking without “being tracked” and without having to register to additional services to actually process the payment.

Then, the team worked on providing the opportunity to users to aggregate their banks accounts under the web banking/banking app of their choice and therefore have a better view on their finances.

“Finally, providing users with direct payments gives them the current outgoing flow and an updated view of their finances. In the future, instant payments will be integrated in our solutions, which means even more transparency for the user,” explains Ramzi Dziri.

Anne-Sophie also underlines that “Open Banking, via payment initiation services, is all about inclusion as it imposes no specific tool to actually pay”.

To download the white paper, get in touch with Partelya Consulting