SEB’s new service provides momentum for the creation of innovative financial solutions

SEB is the first Baltic bank to initiate account information and payment initiation services, in order to provide momentum to the emergence of new and innovative financial services. SEB will begin to implement the requirements of the Payment Services Directive, allowing third parties to access account and payment services with the consent of the client.

The new service is the result of the Payment Institutions and E-money Institutions Act, which entered into force this year, with which the new European Union Payment Services Directive is being transposed into Estonian legislation. According to the Directive, those businesses that have been issued an activity licence by the Financial Supervision Authority will be able to offer the payment initiation service and the account information service.

‘We are waiting for licensed service providers to contact SEB, who would be able to begin using SEB’s account information and payment initiation services, in order to provide their clients with alternative services,’ noted Ragnar Toomla, Head of Digital Strategy for the channels of SEB’s Baltic Division.

It is important to note that client data stored by banks will continue to remain fully protected and it will only be possible to alter data with the clearly granted consent of the user.

Financial technology companies are the target of SEB’s innovation, with the help of which the bank will be able to expand the selection of services offered to clients.

The implementing provisions of the new Payment Services Directive require that banks allow for access to account information and payment services beginning in the autumn of 2019. SEB has already developed application programming interfaces (API), the goal of which is to give service providers the opportunity to offer clients new services in each of the Baltic Republics. Latvian and Lithuanian legislation have yet to be brought into conformity with the Directive, which is why access by service providers is only open in Estonia, where local legislation and regulations are already in place. The corresponding laws should enter into force in Lithuania and Latvia this summer. After which SEB will also be able to offer access to account and payment services in Latvia and Lithuania.

‘Following the dominant trends in the financial world, while also answering the demands of its clients, SEB has created a series of application programming interfaces outside of the scope of services prescribed in the Payment Service Directive. Therefore, service providers will be able to test various ideas and services in the developer’s portal, which have been developed especially for this purpose – www.seb.ee/open-banking. We believe that open banking will change the financial world, and the objective of SEB Bank is to be at the forefront of those developments,’ said Toomla.

*API refers to a software based interface, which can be used for communication and interfacing between applications.