Open Banking is one of the biggest global trends in financial services. We believe our country has got all it takes to be leading innovation in this field.
In June 2020, a bid led by FinTech Scotland, The University of Edinburgh and FDATA was successful and the initiative awarded £22.5m by UK Research & Innovation.
What is Open Banking?
On 13th January 2018, the second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) came into force, giving third party access to payments data into the scope of regulation in the EU for the first time. This is a major change in the industry, one that will certainly generate a lot more innovation.
Open Banking is the UK version of PSD2 and in many ways is a lot more advanced. It doesn’t stop at requiring financial institutions to share payments data but also created a set of standards to make innovation easier and transferable internationally.
Why is Scotland leading Open Banking?
Scotland has got very impressive resources that will help take Open Banking to the next level. The Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre and the Europe’s largest School of Informatics offer unprecedented capabilities.
Coupled with the great work from other universities in developing fintech courses and a growing fintech community, we believe Scotland is second to none when it comes to Open Banking.
What is the Global Open Finance Centre of Excellence
The centre will comprise of:
A global economic observatory to create new insights and new policies
A sandpit offering access to data and insights to universities, NGOs and charities
Capabilities to test policy interventions on live data to predict impact
Unrivalled capabilities to help entrepreneurs develop new solutions
