Ready for the future: PSD3 and what this means for your bank connector

In November 2025, the European Parliament and the Council reached a political agreement on PSD3. Work is now underway to establish the final regulations, which are expected to be published later this year. This means the successor to PSD2 is no longer a distant prospect but a reality. PSD3 will then take effect in 2028.

What does this mean for your bank connector? And why is it wise to start taking this into account now?

From directive to regulation

The biggest change is legal, but the impact is practical. PSD2 was a directive. Each EU member state could implement it in its own way. The result: 27 countries, 27 interpretations, and considerable differences in how banks set up their APIs.

PSD3 will partly become a regulation (PSR — Payment Services Regulation). That means uniform rules across the entire EU. No room for national interpretations. A bank in Germany has to make the same data available as a bank in the Netherlands.

For companies with international bank accounts, that is excellent news.

What changes in practice?

Better data from banks

Under PSD2, banks largely decided for themselves which transaction data they made available through their API. Some banks delivered rich, structured data. Others gave the absolute minimum.

PSD3 introduces data parity. Banks have to deliver the same quality of data through their API as through their own online banking environment. If you see detailed transaction descriptions in your banking app, that information also has to be available through the API.

What that means for automatic matching: higher rates. More data per transaction leads to better recognition and fewer manual corrections.

Stronger authentication, smarter exceptions

PSD2 introduced Strong Customer Authentication (SCA), the mandatory two-factor authentication for bank access. In practice, that led to the well-known 90-day re-authentication: every three months you as a user have to log in to your bank again to keep the connector active.

PSD3 maintains SCA but introduces smarter exceptions. The European Banking Authority (EBA) gets more room to define exemptions for low-risk scenarios. The expectation is that recertification intervals will be extended for parties with a proven track record.

We think that is a good development. The current 90-day rule is a source of frustration for many users, without the frequency of the re-authentication demonstrably increasing security.

IBAN name check becomes standard

PSD3 makes verification of the name linked to an IBAN mandatory. Before you make a payment, the system automatically checks whether the name of the beneficiary matches the IBAN. This already existed in the Netherlands (the SurePay check), but is now becoming mandatory across the EU.

For bookkeeping, this is relevant because it intercepts fraudulent transactions earlier. Fewer incorrect payments means fewer correction entries.

FIDA: beyond bank data

Alongside PSD3, the EU is working on FIDA, the Financial Data Access framework. Where PSD2 and PSD3 are limited to payment accounts and transaction data, FIDA goes a step further.

FIDA opens the door to standardized access to:

• Insurance: policy details and claim history
• Pensions: accrued pension and projections
• Investments: portfolio data and returns
• Mortgages: current mortgage details

For entrepreneurs and their advisers, this creates the possibility to compile a complete financial overview. Not only your bank accounts, but also your insurance, pension accrual and investments, all through standardized APIs.

FIDA is still at an earlier stage than PSD3. The first FIDA implementations are expected to become available from 2028 or 2029.

The timeline

The transition period gives banks and service providers time to adapt their systems. But the direction is set.

What does this mean for your business?

In the short term (2026-2027): Nothing changes about your current bank connector. PSD2 connectors remain fully functional during the transition period.

In the medium term (2027-2028): Your bank connector automatically gets better. Richer data from banks leads to higher match rates. Possibly extended recertification intervals reduce the maintenance burden.

In the longer term (2028+): FIDA opens new possibilities for financial insight. Think of automatic integration of insurance costs or a current overview of your total financial position.

Most important: you don't have to do anything yourself. The adjustments to PSD3 are implemented in the connector by your service provider (in this case iWebDevelopment). You benefit from the improvements automatically.

How iWebDevelopment is preparing

Our architecture has been built on open banking standards from the start. We don't rely on outdated screen-scraping techniques or bank-specific export formats. That makes the transition to PSD3 an evolution for us, not a revolution.

What we are already doing:

• Monitoring of the PSD3 specifications: We follow the technical standards that the EBA is developing and adjust our roadmap accordingly.
• Data parity preparation: Our systems are set up to process richer transaction data as soon as banks make it available.
• FIDA exploration: We are investigating which FIDA datasets are relevant for our customers and how we can integrate them.

ISO 27001 certification is not a side issue in this. The stricter security requirements in PSD3 fit perfectly with the standards we already apply.

The choice of today

You could wait until PSD3 comes into force. But why would you? The bank connectors you set up today via PSD2 will be improved automatically once PSD3 becomes active. You already benefit from automatic bank imports now, and you will benefit from better data and less recertification later.

Starting with a PSD2 connector is not a temporary solution. It is the foundation on which PSD3 builds.

Want to try it yourself? View our bank connector →