As Open Banking / PSD2 comes into force, the banks that have embraced open banking (and fintech in general) as an opportunity rather than a threat are attempting to engage with the development community, both individual developers and larger development organizations. It is through this engagement that these banks are hoping to benefit from the world of open banking. We
Many banks have been toying with Open Banking for a number of years now as a way to improve the customer experience, however, they are generally trying to do this only for their own customers. As a concept, this is almost diametrically opposed to what Open Banking is supposed to offer, however, now that the EU has provided the stick
The Introduction of Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2) brings a lot of change for financial institutions, but what does Open Banking mean for the consumer?
Open Banking as a concept is targeted such that individuals or large and small businesses can benefit from it. Many use the analogy of what the ‘Open Skies’ policy did for air travel in Europe.
There is much talk in banking circles about what is being called ‘Open Banking’, but what does this mean to consumers, banks and intermediaries and what is the relationship with the EU’s Payment Services Directive V2 (PSD2)? In this series of blogs we will attempt to explain what this means to the different parties and what we are seeing happening
A number of banks in Europe have come together around the Payments Services Directive Version 2 (PSD2) to form the Open Banking initiative with a view to creating Open API Standards for UK Banking.
The rollout of these APIs creates major problems for these banks as it will result in significant efforts to on board users of these
Most financial services organizations are in the process of implementing support for the Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2) from the EU mandating that they provide APIs accessing their data and services to various types of organizations. Many are addressing this by implementing some nature of API Gateway such as those from IBM Connect, Apigee, Mulesoft, Fiorano etc. but is this
Testing has always been a critical part of the development lifecycle but never before has it become so critical due to the pressure of delivering high quality software and avoiding a roasting on social media when applications go wrong. Organizations are spending more time and money on testing than ever before, however, are they actually covering everything in their tests?
Many large organizations today have expensive back office IT infrastructures that are difficult to replicate and thus are a scarce resource. As with all scarce resources, they are valuable and thus each usage of that infrastructure incurs a cost which can have a significant impact on testing cycles within organizations.
Back office IT infrastructure is made up of a number
The new Payment Services Directive II (“PSD 2”) deadlines are getting closer and thus there is a focus from banks to ensure they can be compliant when the axe falls in January 2018 when all financial services institutions should be compliant. While almost a year away, complying with the legislation is not technically simple so much work needs to be
Offshore development and/or testing of applications is now used by the vast majority of large organizations to reduce costs and to leverage the skillsets of valuable off shore resources. This will normally require that the offshore organization has some access to back office applications and data if sufficient testing is going to take place for any given project.
This presents
Encouraging innovation is a cornerstone of all organizations that are seeking to take part in the digital economy. Innovation brings new ideas to the table which in turn result in new processes which are supported by new or improved applications running on tablet, smart phone or other delivery channels. These innovations have the potential to save organizations large sums of
Agile development teams often share test environments which is nominally a cost effective solution as test environments are, by their nature, quite expensive to provision. But is this really the most cost and time effective way to provide capability to your testers? Let’s tell a short story here…
How often has a developer run a final test before leaving for
In the age of agile development, speed and quality of delivery is one of the main business drivers. Agile techniques and processes work well, however, how often do you have agile teams waiting on other agile teams to deliver? How often have they had to use poorly implemented stubs to continue their development efforts?
An Agile Testing Sandbox simulates an
Payments systems by their nature are incredibly complex and expensive to create. Thus when trying to test new payments applications, accessing one of these testing environments is essential to build out new and extend existing payments applications. As more and more small, medium and large organizations are now using these systems, getting access to such an environment is proving increasingly
The concept of ‘shifting left’ in the development lifecycle has evolved out of necessity as more frequent and public delivery of applications has required an exponential increase in how much testing must be done, how often it is done and how comprehensive the testing is. In the past, testing was seen to be a final step in the development process
Over the last few years, a number of disruptive technologies have developed that threaten companies by changing their supply chains. The prime focus of the introduction of Blockchain technology is to change Financial Services, but this technology will also have an impact on health systems and most production supply chains. The drive around Blockchain (aka Distributed or Shared Ledger) today,
Organizations are now, to some degree, aiming to move to an agile development methodology as it offers many benefits including faster delivery and better quality releases of functionality that customers want thus leading to better satrisfied and more loyal customers. Whilst modern development technologies and tools lend themselves to the concepts of agile development including the process of continuous integration,
The Payment Services Directive 2 (Directive 2007/64/EC), perhaps better known as PSD2, was adopted by the European Parliament and Council and is set to impact the payments industry across Europe. PSD2 seeks to:
According to Wikipedia: “The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (Regulation (EU) 2016/679) is a Regulation by which the European Commission intends to strengthen and unify data protection for individuals within the European Union (EU). It also addresses export of personal data outside the EU. The Commission's primary objectives of the GDPR are to give citizens back the control of their
Many of us are familiar with the term ‘sandbox’ from our childhoods. A sandbox was a safe, isolated environment where children could play without fear of hurting themselves or damaging anything else in the process. So where does this concept fit into the world of Agile Testing?
The concept of Agile Development