#EFS: the latest trends of the payment industry
The first edition of the European Finance Summit took place on March 5th, 2020, at the European Convention Center Luxembourg, with more than 500 registrants. During the morning session, local and international experts focused on the topic of payments, discussing mobile banking and cryptocurrencies but also consumer needs and demands. Also, for the first time, InFinance organized a live streaming sessions, with more than 500 experts remotely following the conference.
Open finance and its impact on the entire industry
Olivia Vinden (Head of Fintech & Innovation, Alpha FMC UK) then moderated a panel discussion focusing on Open Finance. Jan van Vonno (Research Director, Tink), Marc Hemmerling and Jacques Pütz (CEO, LUXHUB) took part in the discussion. “Open finance goes beyond payments and open banking, but clearly builds on the success of PSD2,” started the moderator.
The experts then discussed innovation and regulation. As explained by Marc Hemmerling, “any business needs rules. In the financial sector, we are sometimes dealing with overregulation. Banks are actually asking for a regulation which allows them to do business. For instance, PSD2 is pushing banks to innovate”.
According to Jan van Vonno, the concept of open banking is not new: innovation has been there for years, but banks now need to abide to strict regulatory conditions set by the EC. He then distinguished innovation coming from Northern countries to APIs that are being developed in Southern countries. “It has to do with digital maturity,” he added.
Jacques Pütz explained that PSD2 was already in production in Luxembourg and added that it was a question of change and culture.
Competition between banks is important, and so is collaboration
Jacques Pütz
The expert then distinguished open banking from open finance, stating that not that many players are currently focusing on b2b but that open finance will add value to the banks which could unbundle their solutions and offer them through APIs.
Photo credit: Dominique Gaul