Providers of online payment accounts must have a compliant way for third party providers (TPPs) to access account data and payment functionality. If this is provided via a dedicated interface, you must have a contingency mechanism in place, unless you have an exemption.
The PSRs encourage competition and innovation by supporting and regulating businesses that use:
- customer account data to provide value add services (eg account dashboards, budgeting tools)
- the payment functionality of customer accounts to provide services (eg paying online without the use of payment cards)
Implementing dedicated interfaces
Technical standards on strong customer authentication, and common and secure methods of communication (SCA-RTS[1]) under the PSRs, set out how the secure communication between these newly regulated businesses and providers of payment accounts that are accessible online (account providers) should happen.
We have encouraged[2] account providers to enable the access required by the PSRs by implementing dedicated interfaces based on secure application programming interfaces (APIs).
A number of account providers are using APIs developed by the Open Banking Implementation Entity[3].
Contingency mechanism
The SCA-RTS contain a requirement to build a back-up system to the dedicated interface – the contingency mechanism.
However, you can request that we exempt you from this requirement.
If you make a request, we will assess your dedicated interface to decide whether to give an exemption. EBA Guidelines[4] are relevant to how we make this assessment.
You can find out more about the information you should provide us with as part of an exemption request in Chapter 17 of the Payment Services and E-money Approach Document[5].
Submitting an exemption request on Connect
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Please log in to Connect and follow these steps: |
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| 1 | Start an application |
| 2 | Payment Services Firms |
| 3 | Requests for exemption from the contingency mechanism |
| 4 | Complete the form |
| 5 | Attach supporting documents |
| 6 | Submit |