HSBC has introduced a new developer portal designed to enable third party payment providers to develop products and services for European consumers and businesses.

HSBC

Image: HSBC releases new portal for third party payments. Photo: Courtesy of geralt/Pixabay.

HSBC stated that the new portal complies with Second European Payment Services Directive (PSD2) and is in line with UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) Open Data Specifications.

With the launch of PSD2 Developer Portal, the bank believes that it can help in meeting the requirements of the directive aimed to increase competition and reduce costs across the European payments market.

The bank claims that the PSD2 Developer Portal is a secure sandbox environment where developers can test application programming interfaces (APIs) for services including account information, payment initiation and funds confirmation.

Developers are also given access to mock data from Retail and Corporate Payment Accounts in scope of PSD2.

HSBC global liquidity and cash management digital global head Nadya Hijazi said: “We are keen to work with multiple parties to develop and test their applications and customer propositions through easy and secure access to the wide range of simulated products and services on our PSD2 Developer Portal. We look forward to working with third party payment providers across Europe to use HSBC’s services and bring new innovation to the market through an intuitive developer ecosystem.”

The testing facility in the sandbox environment offers developers the choice of Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE) and STET standards and the bank is working on the plan to include the Berlin Group standards.

By launching PSD2 Developer Portal, HSBC claims to have taken the next step towards introduced more digital innovation and competition for payment services, while offering high levels of security.

These changes are expected to lead to increased choice for customers in using Account Information Services and Payment Initiation Services, when offering consent to share their financial data.

In January, the bank had settled more than three million FX transactions and made more than 150,000 payments worth $250bn using distributed ledger technology (DLT). The solution is known as HSBC FX Everywhere and has been used for the past one year to orchestrate payments across its internal balance sheets.