Contemporary data sharing models: open banking and open finance

The goal of this paper is to analyse the concepts of open banking and open finance as data sharing models in banking and financial industry. A key idea behind these concepts is to enhance competition among payment service providers, ensure greater transparency of their work, expand the range of choices for consumers and, most of all, add value for the final consumer by improving the quality and reducing the price of services. In Europe, service providers from several European Union countries (Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden – Sofortüberweisung, iDeal and Trustly) became the key drivers of data sharing models, prompting the European Union to regulate this new type of payment services in order to improve competition in the payment services market and ensure better consumer protection. The Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2) 2015/2366 was thus adopted, requiring banks to allow access to customer information to all third-party providers such as payment institutions, e-money institutions, FinTech companies and other credit institutions, subject to customer’s consent. PSD2 recognises two new types of non-banking market participants – account information service providers (AISP) and payment initiation service providers (PISP). The paper combines the descriptive and comparative methods, as well as the case-study method, to give an outline of important data sharing regulations and models, and of the abovementioned payment service providers. The paper also looks into the experience of applying open banking and open finances in the United Kingdom and Brazil. The final section of the paper deals with institutional assumptions for developing the data sharing model in the Republic of Serbia. The current Law on Payment Services (RS Official Gazette, Nos 139/2014 and 44/2018) is largely harmonised with PSD2, as the original Payment Services Directive 2007/64 was fully transposed into the national legislation. Full harmonisation with PSD2 has been achieved through amendments to the Law on Payment Services (RS Official Gazette, No 64/2024) of 31 July 2024, which lay down measures to further enhance competition, innovation and the range of choices for the end-consumer. This Law will be applied as of 6 May 2025. Among other things, open banking will be introduced, as will the domestic equivalents to AISP and PISP participants.