Open Banking, Access to Account Rule and (Free) Marketability of Banking Data

The paper is aimed at scrutinizing the fundamental rules applicable to the open banking ecosystem and the provisions on innovative payment services (account information service and payment initiation service), with specific reference to the access to account rule, as outlined by Directive 2366/2015 (PSD II). In this context, it will be assessed whether the principle of proportionality is respected with reference to the requirements imposed to the Third-party providers (TPP) in the licensing process (provided that some of them do not handle money at any stage of their operation). In fact, the assumption is that they need a specific type of regulation since they are technological players, very different than banks. The paper will also examine the main technical solutions adopted in the context of the regulatory technical standards in order to guarantee effective access to payment account data to third parties and, in conclusion, the possibility of considering payment accounts data as digital commodities.