Gabriela Anton, speaker at the Banking Forum 2023

On 17 October, the business publication Financial Intelligence organised the 2023 edition of the Banking Forum.

Gabriela Anton, Co-Head of the firm's Banking and Finance practice group gave an insightful lecture about EU's package of legislative proposals aimed at propelling payments and the financial services sector into the digital age, aiming at transforming the open banking concept into an open finance concept.

Gabriela Anton said: "Romania implemented this European directive quite late, it was issued in 2015, the implementation deadline expired somewhere in 2017, it came to us with a delay of almost two years. Hopefully with PSD3 we won't have the same delay. (...) This concept of open banking was introduced by the PSD2 directive, it had little success due to obstacles, practically these institutions are also given access to payment systems, previously they were not included in the definition of institutions that could to participate in certain payment systems are now explicitly introduced.

They are also guaranteed the right to open a bank account, because they will need such an account. In practice, there was quite a lot of reluctance on the part of the banks, on the grounds of money laundering or various considerations by which this right was blocked. They are now obliged to give reasons for their refusal and this is limited to certain situations only.

Another practical aspect and fairly well regulated by the new regulation concerns the access to the specific interfaces of the banks. In order to be able to access account data or process payments, these institutions need access to the banks' interface, and banks are required to open this access through specific interfaces and less so through customer interfaces."

The final adoption of this legislative package is estimated to take place during 2025.

Member States will be required to transpose PSD3 within 18 months of publication in the Official Journal of the European Union

According to the new authorization regime introduced by PSD3, the authorizations already granted to payment institutions and institutions issuing electronic money will remain in force for an additional period of 24 months after the entry into force of PSD3.