What’s cooking?

For 2024, the EBA members had prioritised four core topics:

• Instant payments: not surprisingly, our members identified the practical impact of the upcoming Instant Payments Regulation as a top priority for 2024. The scaling-up of instant payment volumes will require many changes, some of which can only be addressed collectively.
• Open Finance: as future regulation gives customers access to more financial data, our members are eager to explore how to apply the lessons learnt from Open Banking to this new reality.
• Cyber security: due to heightened cyber risks, our members are pushing for increasing awareness around cyber threats and would like to look into ways to further enhance operational resilience.
• Collaboration with the technology sector: our members want us to build on the insights from our joint report with Bain on this topic and further explore key success factors.

With these focus topics identified, we rolled up our sleeves and got busy! Some topics were onboarded by our existing working and expert groups, and we created a new group. s. And of course we will also delve into some of our focus topic at our events or seminars this year.

Now, let’s take a look at where we are almost a half year into 2024:

• To identify and approach open questions on the implementation of the Instant Payments Regulation, the EBA launched the EBA Practitioners Group on Instant Payments (IPG) in April. Comprised of a broad group of practitioners from among our AS-PSP members, the group will evaluate the practical compliance and operations issues and may develop market practice recommendations for our members over the coming months.
• Instant payments are also the topic of this year’s EBA Summer School which will explore opportunities and challenges in the growing instant payments landscape. To learn more about the EBA Summer School, visit our website.
• While Open Finance builds on the infrastructure many banks have already invested in for their Open Banking approaches, PSPs need to dig deeper to understand its principles, its opportunities, the most promising use cases, their own positioning and necessary collaborations. The EBA Open Finance Working Group has been working on a new report which will provide our members with guidance on all those questions. The report draws from the experience of Open Banking and Open Finance experts and will be available around EBAday 2024.
• The Association’s Cyber Regulation Sounding Board (CRSB), an advisory panel monitoring cyber-related regulations and industry initiatives, will guide the EBA on how to best add value for our members when it comes to creating awareness of cyber threats. Furthermore, the Association will, with the help of the Payments Regulation Sounding Board, look at how to best tackle DORA and operational resilience.
• EBA members know that collaborations between PSPs and the technology sector will become even more important in the future. But because such collaborations often require significant investment of resources, PSPs want to ensure that they are successful. In 2024, the EBA will evaluate how to further explore the success factors for PSP-tech partnerships and identify potential pitfalls. The topic will also prominently feature in one of our Open Forum on Digital Transformation sessions in the second half of the year.

So, this is what’s on the EBA’s menu this year. We are excited to be cooking with the ingredients you gave us and providing you with palatable, easy-to-adapt recipes – don’t mind the metaphor.

And to make sure our recipes work for you, we need you to join our kitchen crew. If you would like to contribute to our working and expert groups, participate in any of the EBA events or reach out to us with feedback please do not hesitate to contact us at association@cms-test.abe-eba.eu.