BERLIN GROUP

Michael Salmony 0:12

Hello, my name is Michael Salmony and I'd like to welcome you together with Javier and Ralf to another episode of the Payments Trilogue. And this time we're very pleased to have as guest, Wijnand, who comes from the bizarrely named Berlin Group, because of course you set the global standards or one of the big global standard settings in open banking, which isn't exactly suggested by Berlin Group. But maybe you can tell us a little bit about yourself and about Berlin Group and what you do.

Wijnand 0:42

Thank you, Michael. Thank you for your kind introduction and hello to your audience. I'm happy to be part of your trilogue series. I would not really call the standard global, but let's see where we get into the discussion. Maybe as a short introduction of myself for those who don't know me, I'm Wijnand Machielse, active in payments since more than 35 years and vividly remembering the good old days when Michael and I were office neighbors.

Michael Salmony 1:11

you

Wijnand 1:12

sitting

next to each other in the Dutch premises of equensWorldline. And since 2009, I'm with ⁓ SRC Security Research and Consulting, who are the Secretariat and Editorial Lead of the Berlin Group. ⁓ Yeah, to understand where we are today, it is maybe useful to look a bit how we started and how we navigated the complex context.

of open banking and open finance. ⁓ Well, as you know, the Berlin Group is positioned as a pan-European payments interoperability standards and harmonization initiative, delivering harmonized scheme and processor neutral standards. We started in 2004 and since then we've been working on several main focus areas of which the currently most well-known

are the two related initiatives of NextGenPSD2 Open Banking and a Berlin Group openFinance. Now, we were really lucky, of course, to be able to start with a greenfield approach. No one was filling the gap at that time. And from the very beginning, when we started to focus on PSD2 Open Banking, we had a strong supply side participation.

Of course, the supply side was mandated by law to comply with PSD2 and also liable ⁓ when things went wrong. And later on, this was complemented by the market demand side. And we had a strong group of people with business and technical skills and most knew each other from other standardization activities.

Yeah, and we as the editorial team were very dedicated and ambitious about supporting and driving the market supply side in the right direction for open banking. So we started to work in the spirit of an open source initiative. And, well, I think we can clearly say that this has worked well in open banking, where more than 80 % of the market in Europe, but also beyond Europe has implemented the Berlin Group standards.

and that is including both banks and TPPs of course. And this was also for us quite remarkable because let's say our neutrality and total independence implies that the Berlin Group cannot mandate the use of our standards in the market.

that we must leave this to individual market participants through a market-driven process. And with a total of almost 200 organizations involved from the market supply and demand side, I guess we must somehow have been effective in ⁓ accommodating all their needs in data modeling, consent handling, SCA management, etc.

So we delivered modern REST APIs all based on ISO 20022 and supporting optional services as well. So in fact, we delivered already a bit more than required by PSD2.

Michael Salmony 4:39

Maybe I could just say before we delve into the sort of REST API level, maybe just quickly on the geographical coverage. I mean, you rightly corrected me that you're not a global standard, but you've gone beyond as far as I understand, right? Israel is in there, if I remember, is some of the stands and it's sort of actually gone way beyond Europe, which is a success. But on the other hand, within Europe,

Wijnand 4:52

Well, we never had the ambition to be global.

Michael Salmony 5:07

There are some aberrants, right? There's the French and there's the Brits, there's the Polish and the Slovaks, right? I mean, I know there's something wrong with us in the payment industry. We just cannot seem to be able to agree on anything in a pan-European way. But how do you explain that and how do you see that that evolving?

Wijnand 5:25

Yeah, you're rightly saying we were certainly not the only ones in the market of standards. As Andrew Tanenbaum once said, the good thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from. Yeah, let's say despite all our efforts to cooperate with other standards bodies, achieving PSD2 compliance for a market with thousands of participants was a high pressure cooking process for everyone.

And this left no time or very little time for the standards organizations to harmonize fully right from the start, which would have been our most preferred solution. But because our open character as a general guiding principle, ⁓ obviously this also extends to communication with other standardization initiatives and also the ubiquitous adoption of Berlin Group standards in the market.

It made it all the more necessary for us to reach out to the other relevant stakeholders. As the French say, noblesse oblige. And we take this very seriously. So ever since we started our NextGenPSD2 Open Banking Standards in 2016, we approached SWIFT and we asked them to facilitate an ISO alignment process with us and the other Open Banking Standards.

which they did. And after a while, STET from France joined and a few years later the UK Open Banking also joined this initiative. And yeah, this has already resulted in a common data model for account information services and a common data model for payment services. And they've all been delivered for sign-off to ⁓ ISO. And for us, this is a perfect example of the harmonization that we advocate.

And obviously our data models for open banking and open finance fully match the SWIFT models. And in parallel, we have frequent meetings with, for instance, W3C, OpenID and EPC to see where further harmonization can be achieved. And for FIDA, we are cooperating with CEN TC445. ⁓

NextGenPSD2 has now been in a steady, mature maintenance mode for a few years. The other standards are still there in France and in the UK. The Polish standard is a bit mixed because they decided to join Berlin Group for openFinance. To be honest, I don't know the status on the...

standards in Slovakia or in other countries.

Michael Salmony 8:18

But it's really impressive that you've managed to get both sides of the market in there. mean, both the supply and the demand, not everybody's managed that. Bracket SPAA and giroAPI, where they've sort of completely split along the market division. So you've really managed to get both sides on the table. I think that's an extraordinary thing. But maybe one last thing just from my side on this global sort of standards. Can you say something about the US? Because they've gone a different way.

They're not doing Berlin Group, they're doing FDX, I believe. ⁓ Can you sort of compare and contrast why are they better, where are you better?

Wijnand 8:49

Yes.

Well, I have to admit we had some contacts with FDX many years ago, but it was already quite clear ⁓ soon enough that they are driving in a different direction and they had very little connection to the PSD2 regulation. I mean, for us, the European market is already complex enough. So... ⁓

We simply had to leave the discussions with FDX. Maybe they can be ⁓ restarted later on. But ⁓ today we have no further contacts with them. Unfortunately, it's a pity that... But as I said, we never had the ambition to really develop a global standard because in Europe alone it is already difficult enough.

And especially now with open finance, now that we are moving to the new regulations of PSD3, PSR, FIDA, wow, the world is getting ⁓ more and more complex. But let's say we are prepared for this, because open banking has for us always been only the beginning of a larger journey into open finance and open data. And we've always aimed to...

align our open finance services with the ambitions of the European Commission's digital finance strategy and with any relevant future open finance schemes.

Ralf Ohlhausen 10:35

I'll have a few questions there, as you can imagine. before, actually, my first one is more about the governance side and I have to get, well, this disclosure out of the way that I'm co-chairing the Berlin Group Advisory Board, which is elected by the Advisory Group, which represents the demand side in Berlin Group. But

There is of course a big difference between the Berlin Group supply side, which is actually the board and then the demand side being an advisory board that might be listened to or not. Now, before getting my view, may I ask you about how this has worked out and whether it had an impact, say on prioritization, on specifications, or is it just more like a consultation exercise?

Wijnand 11:33

Well, as you know, Ralf we did a strong prioritization years ago. ⁓ That was a detailed exercise with ⁓ almost mathematical precision. And this delivered us for a few years ⁓ some rather detailed work plans. Well, I mean, you're the one who should say, but I've always had the impression that...

This mechanism really allows the market demand side to really feed their feedback input and priorities into the work program. Unfortunately, have to say that ⁓ the work plan has been disrupted in the past two years, three years maybe.

with all the legislative discussions and especially the arrival of the digital euro has taken a lot of our resources. So, let's say for several years we saw that some of the priorities had to be moved

to the next year and we were simply not able to finalize the work program as originally envisaged. So there are a few items which keep coming back since two or three years in fact like ⁓ loan management, ⁓ mortgage management. I mean this is obviously also waiting for more clarification coming from FIDA.

But also securities ordering was high on the list. Several of these things have been delayed.

Ralf Ohlhausen 13:36

Yeah,

if I can say so for me, from my perspective, it was indeed a bit of a mixed thing. So in terms of prioritization, I think it has not worked out so far. But as you say, it's probably not so much ⁓ about ignoring what the demand side here was suggesting. It is more about getting driven by legislation, everything else that comes in left, right and center. So yeah, I appreciate.

On the other side, the influence on the specifications, I think, has been ⁓ quite successful, or at least from the impression I'm having. And maybe I would like to comment here that when taking on this role many years ago, this was at the beginning of PSD2 implementation, I was very, very hesitant because there was big fights, as you know, between banks and TPPs and API functionalities and NextGenPSD2.

was not at all what everyone was expecting, but actually we had to identify that the standard itself, so NextGenPSD2, wasn't the problem. The problem was the implementation of the standard, which is what most people still confuse. So we have a standard, that's you, and then we have the implementation of the standard, that's by each individual bank, some doing well and most doing not so well.

Wijnand 14:49

Yes. Yes.

Ralf Ohlhausen 15:02

So that's the real problem there. And when now we moved or you move from open banking, NextGenPSD2 into open finance and that whole framework, we're not talking not about compliance. We're talking about premium services to be paid. And suddenly the world changed and suddenly we had more, let's say discussion, more smiling faces on both sides of the table because now this was about

Wijnand 15:19

Yes.

Ralf Ohlhausen 15:32

voluntary action and therefore, well, it makes sense. And I think I can say it did work out over time that the supply side, you have listened to what the demand side wanted because obviously if you want to provide and sell something there, ⁓ well, that is required that the demand side is happy about it. I mean, maybe we'll come to that in a minute. ⁓

because so far most of this is still theory and we have to get more reality and action behind it. So from that angle, I think we're fine. But back to the roadmap or what you were saying, what is it that is now being driven or what are the priorities that you are following, as you say, mainly driven by regulation?

Wijnand 16:24

Yeah, well maybe I could first react on your first comment because you were totally right. mean, Berlin Group has always been focusing purely on detailed technical and organizational requirements to achieve this primary objective of interoperability and harmonization. And this was independent from scheme and business arrangements. And ⁓ so in open banking, the idea was that the

that the supervisors would harmonize implementations. And we all know that this has not really worked out in that sense because it took a lot ⁓ more time for them to organize this process. But I'm very hopeful in the context of open finance. Because you know, in open banking...

we all know that from the legislation agreements between banks and TPPs were not allowed. Whereas in open finance, commercial contracts between API clients and asset holders are possible. well, this is likely all to be organized via schemes, because schemes are the only mechanism to really organize this. It's not conceivable that thousands of participants will go on bilateral cooperations.

Javier 17:22

you

Wijnand 17:51

But let's say the difference between open banking and open finance is quite important because initially when implementing the PSD2 open banking regulation, banks faced increasing costs of course and a loss of retail payment revenues to third parties and higher risk of disintermediation. So there were many reasons why banks were quite defensive in the beginning.

On top of that, was lot of uncertainty about the real details of PSD2 and its legal interpretation. And there were many other regulatory measures to be implemented at the same time, like the interchange fee regulation, GDPR, AML directives, Basel III and IV capital requirements. But it was for us very encouraging to see that both banks and TPPs started to identify a lot of new business opportunities with open finance.

because they saw this as a potential leverage from the open banking architectures and investments. So open banking was sometimes assessed mainly as a compliance effort, but this really changed with open finance and this is now increasingly assessed by metrics of new business models ⁓ etc. ⁓ And as a Group

Ralf Ohlhausen 19:10

Actually, if

I may, because I have a very concrete thing on this, because as you know, well, we've spent years on SPAA and in particular one year or even more than one year on working out a commercial model for SPAA. But now

You have ⁓ what's called the one of the extended services is the administrative service API, which allows an onboarding, which allows the negotiation of fees or prices so that you essentially agree bilaterally with the bank say ⁓ on how much to pay. And so I'm seeing a little bit of a rivalry there between

you know, the scheme fee approach that you would get as part of a scheme, whilst now with bilateral APIs, of course, you're technically in a position to make this scheme fee thing not so necessary anymore because you have a more or less automated way of bilateral agreement.

Wijnand 20:18

Yeah, and in fact, I'm not sure if it's rivalry because if you look at the ⁓ giroAPI scheme, which has started in Germany, but let's say there is interest from all over Europe in this scheme, they use the admin services and indeed we have a dedicated price API. ⁓ So they are using these mechanisms within the scheme. ⁓

I don't want to steal too much thunder of my colleague, Ortwin, who's coming next in your Trilogue series. And he's much more because he's German and I'm Dutch, so I'm not really involved in the giroAPI scheme, but he is. So he's probably better able to describe how the admin APIs and the discovery API and the pricing API are being used in the giroAPI scheme.

So I don't see a real rivalry there. It's more, I would say, complementary to what is needed to make a scheme successful. But you're quite right. I mean, with SPAA, we've together seen the discussion ⁓ for many years now.

And I think we both know very well that there is no technical problem, but there seems to be a real commercial problem. I mean, with all the open finance services, we are well prepared to to SPAA. I think we are currently we made an impact analysis some, well, I think a year ago or so. And the conclusion was that almost, let's say, 90 percent.

of the required SPAA services are already covered. Especially of course the extended premium services in payments like request to pay, multiple recurring payments, reservation of funds, deferred payments, etc. But it is... Yeah, sorry.

Javier 22:14

Yeah.

You said, why not you said.

Sorry, yeah, you said that there might be a commercial problem and I would disagree. it's like Ralf complaining that things are not as he would like them to be. And as well with the authorities and the institutional framework, things are not like they would like them to be. And I think that's a naive view on how a market goes ahead and how it evolves and how...

it unfolds the diversity and choices basically as a consequence of freedom. And I think that when we look into be it ⁓ open banking or open finance or whatever that might help overcome fragmentation in Europe, we all have an idea in our head thinking this should be like this. And if it not happens that way, we think there is a failure, there is a problem. And to me, it might just be

that things are like they are because it's a consequence of free choice or freedom of the market participants deciding to do one thing or the other. So why do we think there is a commercial problem while there might not be a commercial problem? That's a gap against our expectations, but nobody says our expectations are fully right. There might not be what a market evolving and...

problem is that we don't understand market dynamics, but we don't necessarily can foresee where the market will go and anticipate and then say, all market participants, you should do this because we want to get there. It's either you force it by regulation, okay, or if you leave market dynamics at work, then you will get where you will get, but not necessarily to a foreseen destination. And I am hesitant to accept that.

Wijnand 24:24

Yeah.

Javier 24:27

There are commercial problems because it's just the different priorities and the different choices taken by the participants.

Wijnand 24:35

Yeah, no, I really have to admit that I agree with you, Javier. I'm also a bit puzzled why, let's say, the commercial model seems so complex. Because as I said, we identified together with the market demand side already many years ago, new business opportunities in open finance. So that's why we started to...

⁓ work on the open finance services. We could of course have waited until mature schemes would have come to the market, but instead we decided not to wait for schemes to be ready, but instead advance proactively already by designing all the open finance services that we believed a large market of users would be interested in.

Yeah, we're currently supporting a broad spectrum of services across various channels, including point of sale, in-app payments, e-commerce, P2P. yeah, mean, everyone was seeing many years ago, new business opportunities. So apparently, there must have been a sense of a win-win for both the market supply and demand side. ⁓ But

Let's say as an outsider, I'm simply observing the difficulties that both Ralf and all of us are seeing in getting EPC SPAA up and running. I'm a bit more positive from what I see happening in giroAPI because there seems to be a common ground between market supply side and demand side on the economic model.

Javier 26:08

.

Okay.

Wijnand 26:29

But again, ⁓ probably Ralf, you have a much better view on this because you are also involved, I think, in the giroAPI setup.

Javier 26:29

Mm-hmm.

Ralf Ohlhausen 26:39

Yeah. And yes, there are differences between SPAA and giroAPI in the pricing model. I guess the most striking one being that you have these percentage fees there in giroAPI. So it's more like a revenue share than fixed fees that we've following in SPAA. But I think it is a red herring really. So we've spent so much time on negotiating there back and forth on what the commercial model should be.

And in the end, there was no implementation so far. So, you know, we have so many different opportunities. We have so many ways we could try to figure out how to work, how to make it a win-win and how to establish the pricing on the go and then see how it goes. So I actually do agree also with Javier there that we should have left more of this to the market. yeah, well, but I think one...

One element in all of this, which is also often underestimated, is that it all started with a compliance thing. So for most incumbents, the banks, all of this has been done as a compliance exercise and with a cost minimization. And that's also why many banks, we ended up with APIs that don't really work from our perspective. How can we move

this from the compliance department to the products department ⁓ in a bank. So how can we get banks to think about this as an opportunity, creating a business case, and then look downstream, okay, well, how much money do we need? How much, et cetera. So basically starting from a business opportunity and then develop it down on what is needed as opposed to...

having it part of the compliance exercise and which is sort of bottom up always trying to keep the cost down as much as possible.

Wijnand 28:36

Well, you're touching an interesting point. We haven't really discussed the roadmap yet, but something especially in focus for us this year is communications. Because we have been working so hard all these years in delivering all these nice services, but somehow they are still a bit under the radar. ⁓

provided the industry with a shared language of consistent data models, predictable endpoints, robust security, ⁓ which in practice should mean fewer integration surprises ⁓ and certainly faster time-to-market delivery and a smoother path from sandbox to production. But what we are seeing that indeed this is not commonly understood across the full market of business responsibles and at

executive levels. And this is why we have developed a larger communications campaign with a lot of visual content for sharing via website, social media, video channels, etc. And we're starting soon with a series of short videos broadcasted on YouTube and promoted via our dedicated LinkedIn channel. This is first of all about

the Berlin Group in general, so explaining why it was established, how it is organized, what the differences are between standards development versus scheme roles and responsibilities, what our standards development process looks like, but it will certainly, or I should say especially, also go into the details of the openFinance API framework.

So starting with talking about the basic architecture, how consent management is organized, the Berlin Group support in API schemes, and then we go into deep dives about the framework services. So in total, we have a long list of 20 to 25 short video themes and topics. ⁓ Yeah, and this is...

probably helpful in making the market understand all the potentials. But I also really see a strong role for schemes as well. Because in the end, well, we started to talk about the implementations. In the end, and that's why I'm a bit more optimistic on the variety of implementations that we've seen, in the end, it will be the schemes that

will discipline the market with testing, with certification, because that is clearly a scheme responsibility of course.

Ralf Ohlhausen 31:28

Well, you're

in a very good position in Germany there, historically, and many other reasons, and giroAPI, but what about other countries? So isn't there a risk that these schemes in those different countries, potentially 27 of them, or maybe even 27 times five or five different financial sectors in each country? So isn't there a risk that they may choose a different standard that Berlin Group ⁓

Javier 31:43

would be different.

Okay.

Ralf Ohlhausen 31:56

is not seen as a European ⁓ standard, but more like a German one.

Wijnand 32:03

No, I don't see that risk at all, to be honest, because we see currently many markets already ⁓ implementing the version 2 architecture, which is, as you know, the open finance architecture. So, ⁓ yeah, all the markets, not only Germany, but also Austria, and well, especially also in Eastern Europe.

These markets are moving to the version 2 architecture because they are already embarking on the idea that we need open finance and open finance schemes in the future to make things interesting. And I think, let's say, most markets are currently burdened with ⁓ costly payment mechanisms.

sometimes based on expensive credit card handling. And I think everyone sees the huge potentials of ⁓ pay by bank, which in fact is something ⁓ open finance would like to promote. So that will be future and that is what we see happening currently in all the different markets across Europe.

Javier 33:13

So,

So a quick question, Wijnand. If you were to meet the Open Data genie, what would be your three wishes you would ⁓ ask him to grant? What are the big obstacles you see when going ahead towards Open Data? which are the main things you think you need to be really successful?

Wijnand 33:45

Yeah. Well, the first thing is, of course, in open data, you have specific ⁓ expertise areas where further standardization is needed. We see this, for instance, in FIDA with insurances. The insurance world is very fragmented, but...

What is very hopeful is that there are several standards and UNC in fact started to standardize already some promising data models for insurances years ago. And also several markets in Europe have some strong standards in insurances. And this is what CEN, so there is a dedicated working Group TC445.

⁓ This is what CEN is currently working on and we are cooperating with them because they have, let's say their ambition is to standardize the data models, but they don't have the ambition ⁓ to define detailed API endpoints, for instance, or ⁓ deal with the complex consent handling, etc. So they would prefer to rely on already existing standards.

It is in such expertise areas in open data, ⁓ mortgages, for instance, is another loans that those are, let's say, more, well, they are different. They are different from payments, obviously, and they have their own requirements. So that is something I would like to ask the open data genius to, yeah, to... ⁓

to foster standardization in all these areas. ⁓ You asked for three ideas. ⁓ boy.

Michael Salmony 35:48

about somebody enforcing the lovely standards that you've actually generated.

Wijnand 35:54

Yeah, well, that is again an implementation question, Michael. And as you know, I try to refrain a bit from how, let's say standards should really be ⁓ enforced or adopted in the market. I think, let's say a good standard, a high quality standard qualifies automatically to be elected as the standard for implementation.

But as I said, indeed, there is more, let's say, guidance needed from, for instance, schemes. Because in schemes, there is, of course, the multilateral commercial relationship between market supply and demand side, which means that there are certain responsibilities and liabilities to be obeyed.

So it's only natural for schemes to start promoting the good implementation of standards. So with EPC SPAA, for instance, we discussed also the possibility to prepare a dedicated EPC SPAA implementation guide. Just showing how from all the different options in the Berlin Group standards,

an EPC SPAA scheme should be implemented. But let's say whether the market should also be incentivized. Well, as you know, in FIDA there is this famous Article 11 where the European Commission ⁓ could intervene if the market is not able to organize itself. I'm not sure how this will in the end work out, but ⁓ yeah, there is some...

Javier 37:21

Yeah.

Ralf Ohlhausen 37:21

Well, we

Wijnand 37:44

some pressure on the market to organize itself.

Javier 37:48

My wish to the genie...

Ralf Ohlhausen 37:48

Well, we... No, go ahead.

Javier 37:52

Just to end, I will be short. My wish to the genie would be that we get better education about the topic and that many misunderstandings and confusion is avoided because we are still anchored to many flawed analysis and we are still discussing things that should have been clarified and still are not yet clear enough. At least for the genie.

Wijnand 38:18

Yes, I fully agree. And

indeed that's why, let's say I'm a bit hopeful on the impact of our communications campaign. On the website we also have a link to a dedicated open finance foundational e-learning course, which is designed to provide a comprehensive understanding of the Berlin Group's frameworks. ⁓

and show that ⁓ which may seem as a complex standard can easily be translated into clear practical know-how. Offering a valuable introduction to developers, product managers, strategists, giving them the essential knowledge to navigate ⁓ open finance. And the developer of this ⁓ foundational e-learning course, which is by the way, Maciej Kostro from ING, he's...

industry expert and valued member of our task force. He has already offered to extend this in the future with all the new learnings from PSR and FIDA once this is all finalized as regulation.

Ralf Ohlhausen 39:26

Yeah, I can also only recommend that. But we've spoken a lot about schemes and well, you have, I'm still not sure about all the roadmap items, but there is a large selection of open finance framework API standards now already there. But I think one has to understand that most of this, the vast majority of these extended services, they were not

They were not developed for schemes or TPPs to be used. They were prioritized for banks to serve their own, mainly corporate customers. So the majority of these services and the driver for it is helping banks to serve their corporate customers with it, bilaterally. But even then,

At least from my perspective, doesn't look as if that's too many of the banks have actually started implementing it. Why is that? Or am I wrong?

Wijnand 40:29

Well, pressure on corporate services started also from the corporates themselves, because ⁓ they started to understand that there is a large open banking and open finance standardization going on in Europe. ⁓

Large corporates don't want to be confronted with X many different standards in their market and they were pushing towards further harmonization. For instance in trade finance where we see this happening. ⁓ So it's funny because retail banking always steals the news but ⁓ corporate for banks corporate services are of course also very interesting.

and especially for, as I said, these corporates. So, yeah, this was, let's say, something that came along with the publication of new services, where the banks identified the opportunity to reuse these services also for direct access for their corporates. And by the way, also for wallets, which is something we haven't touched too

deep because we first wanted to solve the user management services and onboarding for corporates. ⁓ But there was a clear business opportunity seen and there was a high pressure coming from the corporates. And also another area is auditor companies. So the large auditors, they also saw the opportunity to

to standardize the way they are working with their corporates. So altogether, this, let's say, gave an immediate business case. the direct access services for corporates are not fully finished yet. As I said, we still need to work on the user management and onboarding APIs.

account management as well. But this is progressing heavily this year ⁓ and this will definitely be implemented. At the same time, you're also right. I mean, we've had many discussions in the past years on signed payments where we, let's say, ⁓ where you offered a preferred ⁓ solution.

which we checked with the banks and none of the banks were interested in implementing it. So that created a problem for us because we're not defining standards just for academic reasons. They need to have a purpose and we need to have at least some certainty that they will in the end be implemented.

So what we did is we invited the market demand side to approach banks and ask them or try to push them for implementation. And that's our preferred way of working. mean, there has to be a kind of clear business visibility on both sides. Otherwise, we're just standardizing

How do you say that? ⁓ La polar in French, which is of course a bit senseless. mean, we have scarce resources which we have to spend well. So we have to prioritize things and we will only prioritize those things that have clear business visibility on both sides.

Michael Salmony 44:37

But it's very good to see that you're also going into the interview.

Ralf Ohlhausen 44:37

Yeah, I'm still working on that, by the way. So I still believe that the signed payment

request is ⁓ one of the most important elements that we will need also for European payments, not just on the TPP side, but generally speaking. So I'm pretty sure that will convince everyone about that concept, but it is work in progress here, right?

Wijnand 44:56

Yeah,

and we have, of course, we have a signed payment solution, which will this year also be extended with EMV cryptogram data to make it work also for card payments. But it's not exactly the solution as you envisaged years ago. So hopefully we will be able to extend this as well. Let's see.

Michael Salmony 45:22

Yeah, no, it's very good to see all the areas you're getting into and also B2B, which I've always been a huge fan of and that's proven in many areas to be the actual money winner. Although everybody always thinks about consumer. ⁓ Our time is almost up, but I don't want to let you go without saying just a few sentences about sort of the end of your roadmap, sort of digital euro, AI, stable coins. Any of those topics becoming relevant for you?

Wijnand 45:50

yes, absolutely. On the roadmap that we've published on the website, you will see that agentic AI is clearly on our radar for this year. McKinsey thinks that it is, well, that it should be considered as the next major paradigm in enterprise automation and decision making, for instance. ⁓ And the Berlin Group APIs

Of course, they represent an interesting data pool to unlock through agentic AI and agentic commerce. And with further expansion into open finance, this data pool will become even more interesting, is at least the general expectation. ⁓ And so, and what we see is, well, this creates also a strong foundation for licensed TPPs to explore AI driven and agentic services in banking.

And some European TPPs have already started to experiment with agentic AI concepts. For instance, self-driving money, automated cash management, know, AI-powered open banking services. This is currently mainly ⁓ deterministic rule-based automation, but the marketing of what we see of these related TPPs ⁓ explicitly reference agentic AI ⁓ as well.

So this is certainly something we will focus on. In fact, the task force asked us to urgently address this, given the rapid pace of AI developments. So again, what we see here is again that let's say our prioritization sometimes gets a bit disturbed by market developments and agentic AI and the AI developments are clearly one of these examples. On the digital euro,

which you also will find in the roadmap for this year. Well, as you may know, and certainly Ralf does, because he's also involved there, the ECB rulebook development group's progress report of October last year listed already several European standards, including those of the Berlin Group.

as proposed standards for digital euro use cases. We have to wait and see what will be in the next version of the rulebook that will be the basis for the pilot project planned for mid-2027. But overall, it is of course a very positive step for the broader ecosystem because it reflects the growing recognition that open

Interoperable standards are the foundation of a competitive and interoperable European payments market. And it's, by the way, also consistent with the strong recommendation in the draft digital Euro regulation to leverage open European standards that foster interoperability. And from what we see happening across the many specialized work streams in the ECB,

It seems that the ECB is now really relying on ISO 20022 for data modeling, which is a positive. And also that a separation is made between application and settlement levels with only one settlement process for all business use cases. And this was for us very important.

Michael Salmony 49:21

Okay, Wijnand I think we got a very good impression. We've taken a bit longer than usual, but you've given us so many insights on the amazing stuff Berlin Group is doing. mean, full disclosure, I've been a fan of Berlin Group since the beginning, and I've had the pleasure of also working with you on a number of things. You've really progressed from just a standard setting ⁓ thing to open banking, open finance, to testing, to B2B, now launching a communications campaign, thinking about AI and digital euro. think that's extraordinary.

and you've captured almost all of Europe and that alone is a huge feat both supply and demand side. So congratulations on that and wish you all success. So thank you to you Wijnand and to Ralf and Javier and to everybody watching. I hope that was insightful and look forward to seeing you next time.

Wijnand 50:10

was a pleasure to be here.

Javier 50:10

Thank you, Wayne.