Human Momentum

I’ve been travelling quite a bit recently for work and have been reminded (again) how ‘human factors’ can defeat any attempt to improve security.

A good example of this is chip and pin/contactless. Chip and Pin is common and popular in Europe and as a result in Europe I never ‘give’ my card to members of staff for them to process it. This reduces the risk of fraud substantially as staff cannot easily clone/copy cards when they’ve never handled them.

Will PSD2 revolutionize banking?

There has been quite a lot of excited commentary about how PSD2 will revolutionize the banking industry, so I thought it was worth a bit of analysis to see what the actual outcome is likely to be.

What is it

PSD2 is a EU directective aimed at

• Forcing open API’s on the payments industry to open up competition including ability to deliver cross border direct debit
• Increasing security of payments/banking by mandating ‘strong authentication’ based on multiple factors
• Better transparency on charges for payments

What are people saying it will mean

A number of commentators are crediting PSD2 with opening up the EU banking market to much more competition from non-banks and between banks. The theory is that these new entrants will use the API’s expose to create new and exciting services that will take marketshare away from banks.