Open Banking
What is Open Banking?Open Banking is a banking practice that provides third-party Financial Service providers (TPP) open access to consumer banking, transaction and other financial data from banks and non-bank financial institutions through the use of application programing interfaces (APIs)
PSD2 Directive
PSD2 known as the second Payment Service Directive is the EU regulation that regulates payment services and payment service providers aiming to create a more open, competitive and secure payment to payment service users (PSUs). PSD2 also provides requirements for Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) and allows entities the access or aggregate account information for electronic payments.
PSD2 Legal Framework in Albania:
In accordance with the national payment strategy and in order to transpose the provisions of the European Directive PSD2 in Albania, in 2020 was approved and published the Law No. 55/2020 "On Payment Services", defining standards, user security and protection criteria, information and transparency criteria and specific categories of payment service providers, including their roles and responsibilities in compliance with the requirements of the law. In compliance with the law, in January 2024, the regulation no. 29/2022 "On strong customer authentication and common, open and secure communication standards", entered into force. The regulation defines the security measures, open communication standards, risk assessment methodologies and other technical requirements in order to establish the conditions for the implementation of open banking in Albania.
For more information:
Document Title 28306 1 (bankofalbania.org)
Document Title 32053 1 (bankofalbania.org)
TPP
TPPs are third party providers which are mainly Payment Initiation Service Providers, Account Information Service Providers or Account Service Payment Service Providers. These institutions interact with the bank through bank’s APIs to provide services to consumers. TPPs need to meet regulatory requirements and need to obtain Payment Service Providers licenses from National Regulators to register in our API
API
API is a software that serves as a bridge to transfer data and allow to applications to communicate. Interested parties can complete their registration online on the BKT API Portal, obtain information on the available APIs and familiarize themselves with them in the Sandbox test environment.
The BKT API is addressed to Third Party Providers (TPPs) in Albania such as:
- Account Information Service Providers (AISPs): These provide aggregated information about one or more payment accounts which the Customer keeps with various banking institutions, so that the Customer can have the overall picture of his financial situation at any given time. AISPs only have access to information about the consumers’ accounts (personal and corporate) and cards of the consumers.
- Payment Initiation Service Providers (PISPs): These offer the possibility for an electronic payment to be initiated, after relevant instructions are issued by the payer, from an account of the payer kept with another payment services provider (banking institution), while at the same time providing merchants with the assurance of the payment’s initiation, so that the goods may be released or the services may be provided without delay.