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Since September, the provisions of the EU Payment Services Directive PSD2, which the Bundestag had transposed into German law in mid-2017, have also taken effect in Germany. In addition to the 2-factor authentication for online banking, local financial institutions must also have a uniform, disclosed interface at their disposal to enable certified third-party providers to access account data for different applications. Above all, the EU Commission wanted to boost innovative services from fintechs. However, according to an industry insider, the legislator has achieved the opposite in practice.
Startups tend to be no winners
"Google, Facebook and Apple are the real winners," said Martin Schmidberger, head of customer interactions at ING-Diba on Tuesday.Data day Data sharingThanks to the interfaces, the tech giants could "act like a bank without being one." This would make it possible to map "all services through aggregated contacts." The competition would shift towards "Non "In line with this, Google has already announced that it intends to enter the banking business and that the large comparison service Check24 already has a banking license to" link "relevant services with travel or insurance.
The legally required interface allows registered third parties to load account sales into various apps, according to the data mining expert, so that users can use their own cockpit to view their sales and make money transfers there as usual. The big question associated with this is who still has the "central access to the customer". Startups did not tend to be, as they only occupied small niches and were struggling to get the required consent from the customer for data access.
The cards in the banking business would be remixed with the directive, stated Schmidberger. Competitive thinking, however, is limited, as the large data-driven players could exploit their massive customer benefits. With the large end customer markets, which take place digitally, there is already an "unbelievable market concentration". Google & Co. would therefore always benefit from data sharing requirements the most, "since they already have an established platform" and could easily skip the compliance hurdle. Ultimately, the key element for data-driven business models is "traffic, meaning users".
Data does not automatically generate competition
"Data per se do not generate competition," emphasized the honorary professor. "It needs access to the customers." If the bank contacts in this specific case now "land with others, a piece of the product costing a checking account has become obsolete". The traditional finance houses should therefore raise their prices for such basic products.
Nevertheless, the SPD net politician Saskia Esken campaigned in principle for the Social Democratic initiative for a law for "data for all". The Bureau of the party has recently adopted an approach according to which market dominant companies should be committedSharing relevant resources with other companies in the same industry. She considers this to be too brief, since data should be disclosed to the general public in order to promote civil society innovations. On the whole, however, the candidate for the SPD presidency described the project as a first step towards creating a "culture of data sharing". The state as the "largest data monopoly" should parallel in the field of open data with a good role model finally decided.
The last point was agreed by the FDP member of parliament Manuel Höferlin. But the Liberals did not want compulsion for companies to share data. First, it is important to define open interfaces and to ensure the portability of information. It makes sense to have a data carousel in which interested parties feed in data and set specific usage rights: "The more I share, the more benefits I can derive from it."
