Russians will be able to make money transfers over the phone in 2019 and they won’t need to add a bank card to the number.

This model has become possible owing to the principles of the PSD2 (Revised Payment Service Directive) that has come into force in EU countries in January 2018.

PSD2 mechanisms oblige the banks to provide client data bases and APIs to third parties in financial sector. This approach enables creation of open banking that excludes any mediators during financial transactions.


Online business magazine Invest Foresight has explained the new model with SimplePay founder Dmitry Agapitov. We have selected the key parts of the article for your consideration.

PSD2 is the logical continuation of PSD1 adopted in 2007. The financial market didn’t have many digital players back then. However, there was a growing number of online services that weren’t covered by PSD1 and therefore, remained unregulated by EU countries.


By the new directive, financial organizations will provide some user data to new players through APIs. Essentially, it will work as a messenger analogue, where the online service sends a request to the financial organization about accessibility of a certain sum on the client’s account, for instance, and receives an affirmative or negative reply. Thus, the user data will not be revealed entirely.

PSD2 also obliges all new actors in the financial market to register and get licensed in EU.

The new directive covers the payment security as well. All online payments will be protected with SCA (Strong Customer Authentication), which uses at least two elements of authentication. These elements include the PIN, password, code word; fingerprint, voice, retina pattern (biological identification); cards, magnetic key or token (physical data carriers).


Other advantages of PSD2 are the mandatory return of debit payments within 8 weeks and the ban for additional commission fees for card payment servicing. Clients will lose just EUR 50 in unauthorized payments, unless there is a proven fact of purposeful fraud or gross negligence by the client.

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