Mastercard seeks to break down trust barriers in Open Banking

The programme seeks to address the liability worries of banks sharing their data with third parties and to help startups to better communicate with their banking partners.

For banks, Mastercard is building a pan-European directory of verified and legimate third party providers, backed by a fraud monitoring service and dispute resolution mechanism. Startups in turn will be provided with a ‘connectivity hub’ that will help third parties establish and maintain communication with banks.

“We believe that these services address significant obstacles to the creation of a vibrant and successful open banking ecosystem” says Jason Lane, EVP, market development Europe. “We recognize that trust challenges exist on both sides – third parties need to be able to access the data and infrastructure controlled by banks, and at the same time banks need confidence that the third parties requesting account access are legitimate.”

The new suite of services will be launched first during a pilot phase in early 2019, says Lane, with the UK and Poland being a particular priority, before being rolled out across Europe later that year.