Too Long; Didn't Read
European Union’s Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) and UK's Open Banking initiative were announced at the beginning of 2018. The initiatives are supposed to make financial connections between customers and financial companies - whether they are major commercial banks, financial data aggregators, or other third-party market players - much easier, more secure, and faster, not to mention more profitable. Open Banking is based on an open Application Program Interface (API) which then allows smaller third party players to base their products/services on the already-existing platforms. The UK initiative is much more liberal to the regulatory subjects, demanding to be implemented by just nine large providers in the UK.