European banking
欧洲银行业
Open plan
开放计划
The promised financial revolution is still on the horizon
承诺的金融革命才刚刚起步

Few expected an overnight sensation. Still, January 13th 2018 was supposed to mark a big step towards exposing the European Union’s banking systems to digital competition. The eu’s revised payment services directive (psd2) came into effect; so did a British variant, Open Banking, the fruit of an investigation by the national competition watchdog. A year on, there is little sign of a stampede to switch banks. Yet progress is quietly being made.
没什么人指望这事能一步登天。不过，2018 年1 月13 日这天还是被设想成欧盟银行系统向数字化竞争敞开所迈出的一大步：欧盟的支付服务指令第二版（PSD2）生效；与此同时，由英国竞争监管机构的调研成果所催生的一个类似的规定“开放银行服务计划”（Open Banking）也在当天生效。如今，一年过去了，并没有出现什么客户蜂拥换银行的情况。不过进步正在悄然发生。

In essence, the new rules seek to ensure that digital technology sharpens competition, by loosening banks’ grip on customers’ financial data, but without compromising security. They allow third parties, whether tech firms or other banks, to gather information from several accounts—with customers’ permission—in one place, so that people can manage their finances better. They also make it easier for third-party firms to pay online merchants directly from customers’ accounts.
本质上，这些新规定试图在不损害安全性的前提下，放松银行对客户金融数据的控制，以确保数字技术促进竞争。它们允许第三方——无论是科技公司还是其他银行——在客户许可的情况下把多个账户的信息集中到一起，这样人们就能更好地管理自己的财务。新规还令第三方公司能更便捷地从客户的账户直接向在线商家付款。

Open Banking is obligatory only for Britain’s nine biggest banks, although others have signed up. Not all of these were ready at the start. “For the past 200 years banks have focused on keeping customer data and not letting anyone else get at it,” says Emmet Rennick of Oliver Wyman, a consulting firm. “In the past year or two they’ve been told, ‘That’s not the game’. But they have improved their act. Some are rolling out their own aggregation apps. The average response time of banks’ apis—the software which gives access to the permitted data—to queries from third parties was halved between July and November.
开放银行服务仅对英国最大的九家银行强制执行，不过其他银行也已参与进来。并非所有的银行一开始就已准备就绪。“过去200 年里，银行一直致力于保管客户数据，不让他人获取，”咨询公司奥纬（Oliver Wyman）的埃米特·伦尼克（EmmetRennick）表示， “在过去的一两年里，它们却被告知‘不能这么干了’。”但银行的做法已经有所改进。一些银行正在推出自己的聚合应用。从去年7 月到11月，银行API（即提供对开放数据访问的接口）对第三方查询的平均响应时间缩减了一半。

Even so, Jaidev Janardana, chief executive of Zopa, a British online lender, says that the biggest improvement would be a slicker connection between Zopa’s smartphone app and those of would-be borrowers’ banks. (Applicants used to have to send pdfs of bank statements to confirm their incomes; now Zopa can look through banks’ apis.) Only half the applicants who reach this stage complete it: at banks with the clunkiest apps, a mere 15-20% do.
即便如此，英国网贷平台Zopa 的首席执行官杰德夫·贾纳尔达纳（Jaidev Janardana）表示，最大的进步还是Zopa 的智能手机应用与准借款人的手机银行应用之间的连接变得更顺畅了。（过去，申请者必须发送银行对账单的PDF 文件来证明自己的收入情况，现在Zopa 可以通过银行的API 查看。）进行到这一步的申请者只有一半最终完成贷款。而在那些应用最不好用的银行，这个比例只有15%到20%。

How banks’ apis will function elsewhere in Europe is also a thorny question. Until that is answered, “important parts of the political and regulatory landscape will remain unclear,” says Daniel Kjellen of Tink, a Swedish account aggregator. Last year the European Banking Authority, a regulator, drew up technical standards, due to come into force in September. Banks are supposed to have apis in place well before then, so that third parties can test them and regulators approve them.
银行的API 将如何在欧洲其他地方发挥作用也是个棘手的问题。瑞典账户聚合平台Tink 的丹尼尔·凯伦（Daniel Kjellen）表示，在这个问题得到解答之前，“政治和监管形势的重要环节不会明晰”。去年，监管机构欧洲银行管理局（EuropeanBanking Authority）起草了技术标准，预计将于9 月开始执行。而银行应该在此之前早早将API 准备就绪，这样就可以由第三方测试并由监管机构批准。

Financial-technology firms worry, for example, that banks will redirect customers to their own apps to authorise the use of data. This could make the process cumbersome and put people off new services. Another concern is that standards may proliferate, raising third parties’ costs and doing little to unify Europe’s banking markets. The Berlin Group, which involves dozens of banks and financial firms, has published a common framework. Some regulators are also promoting national standards.
金融科技公司有自己的担心，例如，银行会将客户重新导向它们自己的应用，来授权数据使用。这可能会导致流程变得繁琐，让人们对新服务望而却步。另一个担忧是标准可能层出不穷，这不仅会增加第三方的成本，也几乎无助于统一欧洲银行市场。由数十家银行和金融公司组成的柏林集团（Berlin Group）公布了一个通用框架。一些监管机构也在推广国家标准。

An open question is how much appetite Europeans have for more open banking. People are notoriously loth to abandon their banks. Yet there are signs of latent demand: Yolt, an aggregator owned by ing, a Dutch bank, already boasts more than 500,000 British users; online banks are making a splash. In 2019 banks and upstarts alike may get closer to an answer.
欧洲人对更开放的银行服务有多大兴趣还是个未知数。人们是出了名地不愿意改换银行。但潜在的需求也开始显现：荷兰银行 ING 旗下的聚合平台 Yolt 号称已经拥有超过50 万名英国用户；网上银行正在吸引大量关注。2019 年，各家银行和新兴企业可能都会更快知道问题的答案。

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