Open Banking, the UK’s implementation of Europe’s Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2), has had something of a slow start, with limited adoption, then COVID-19 and Brexit hitting but the principles behind it are solid. Its fundamental changes to how banks handle financial information mean that banks can now share the kind of information that you would see on an account statement with authorised providers – with a client’s permission of course – and add a host of security, scalability and flexibility features that open up the possibility for new revenue streams for merchants.

The pandemic has brought about unprecedented changes in the world of payments and the way customers consume goods.

Sales in and out of the UK include new restrictions and additional intra-regional fees as a result of Brexit. Read on for insights into what this means for merchants in the UK and the EU, and five approaches merchants can take to deal with the new measures.

As technology advances and payments are increasingly made online, fraud cases are unfortunately on the rise too. This can come in many guises, from traditional ‘phishing’ cases, to data breaches, and ever-increasing ‘friendly fraud’. Whatever the method, fraud can have devastating effects on businesses, their reputations, and finances. It was reported that in 2018 alone, criminals successfully stole £1.2 billion through fraud and scams, so it’s more important than ever to keep up to date with the latest information on how to prevent your business or customers falling victim.

On 11th March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic. At the time of writing, hundreds of thousands of lives and businesses have been affected. With multiple countries issuing bans on travel across borders and ordering shutdowns of cities and towns, many businesses are seeing the virus take its toll.

PSD2 continues to transform online payments. Proactive merchants are identifying fresh opportunities to innovate and are taking control of the data that drives their businesses. One significant area of opportunity in 2020 is strong customer authentication (SCA), which is set to become a requirement for most online transactions by the end of this year.