Shopbuddies partners with BudgetBakers to make use of the Account Information Service regulated by the European Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2).
Under this European directive, European consumers can permit their bank to share their data with other companies, such as BudgetBakers and ultimately Shopbuddies. Your bank cannot refuse to do so. It is your data after all, so you get to decide how to manage it. PSD2 is, therefore, a benefit to you.
The European Union came up with the PSD2 directive because it believes that banks currently have too much power, as they have exclusive rights in terms of payment transfers. The goal is to reduce bank dominance; Europe aims to partly shift the control of banking data from the bank to the customer.
This directive, in fact, says that European banking institutions are obliged, when a customer asks, to share that customer’s account information with other companies that have received special authorisation from the financial supervisory authority.
Our partner, BudgetBakers, was authorized by the Czech National Bank as a payment institution offering “Account Information Services.”
This recognition followed a licence application in which BudgetBakers was able to demonstrate that it had fit and proper directors and appropriate organisation. This means that BudgetBakers must ensure it has appropriate measures in place for such things as internal control, compliance, (internal and external) audit, a European anti-money laundering policy, risk management policy, and conflicts of interest policy.