The New Financial Information Service – Changing the Market of Information Services for the Better?

In pursuit of the 2020 Retail Payments Strategy, the European Commission launched its proposal for a revised payment services regulation package in 2023, together with a proposed regulation on Financial Data Access (FiDA). The FiDA, if adopted, will introduce a new player, the Financial Information Service (FIS), onto the financial services marketplace. Meanwhile, the current Payment Services Directive (PSD2) and the proposed revision already includes an Account Information Service (AIS). The FIS covers a wide range of financial information whereas the AIS only offers payment account information, but an unjustified difference is that the AIS continues to obtain access to data free-of-charge while the FIS must pay for access to data. The proposals therefore create an unlevel playing-field between the services, favouring the AIS. Is this advantage enough to keep the AIS alive after introducing its superior service, the FIS? This article examines this issue, scrutinising the dysfunctionality between the rulesets and their ability to create ‘Open Finance’ as envisaged in the 2020 Retail Payments Strategy. This article concludes that Open Finance would be best achieved by adhering to the Commission’s phrase “same activity, same risk, same rule”, which would require the services to be regulated by the same regulation.