Berlin Group Openfinance

The 'Berlin Group' is a pan-European payments interoperability standards and harmonisation initiative with the primary objective of defining open and common scheme- and processor-independent standards in the interbanking domain between Creditor Bank (Acquirer) and Debtor Bank (Issuer), complementing the work carried out by e.g. the European Payments Council. The Berlin Group first met in Berlin, hence its name, in October 2004 and currently has participation of 26 major players in the payments industry from 10 different euro-zone countries and from the UK, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Turkey, Bulgaria, Hungary, Russia, Serbia and Switzerland, together representing more than 25 billion card-originated transactions annually within the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA). The participants are banks (ASPSPs), banking associations, payment associations, national and international payment schemes, and interbank processors working in SEPA. The Berlin Group openFinance API Framework will allow banks and TPPs to offer enhanced commercial premium services, products and enriched data beyond the regulatory PSD2 scope of Berlin Group NextGenPSD2. By expanding the access of customers’ financial data to broader data sources and additional account types, enhanced views on customers’ finances are offered which will empower bank customers to actively choose the best value products and services they need. The openFinance services will attune to the ambitions of the European Commission’s Retail Payments Strategy and to relevant API Access Schemes. Please contact info@berlin-group.org for any further questions or information.