On 13 January 2018 the second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) became law across the European Union, leading to Open Banking. For background information, please see EU oversight on payments and Open Banking.

Mastercard announced on 5 June that it is launching a suite of services to help banks and FinTech companies navigate the Open Banking environment. The programme seeks to address the liability issues of banks sharing their data with third parties and to help startups to better communicate with their banking partners. For banks, Mastercard is building a pan-European directory of verified and legitimate third party providers, backed by a fraud monitoring service and dispute resolution mechanism. Startups in turn will be provided with a ‘connectivity hub’ that will help third parties establish and maintain communication with banks.

The new services will be launched first during a pilot phase in early 2019, with the UK and Poland being a particular priority, before being rolled out across Europe later that year.