Over the last decade, the financial services industry has been changing rapidly. More often, banks, insurance companies and other more traditional market participants engage in collaborations with new market entrants and FinTech companies to redefine their business model. The focus here is mostly on reaching a wider and more divergent customer base, by diversifying the existing product range and making digital banking more user friendly.
This growing interaction between traditional financial institutions, FinTechs and customers is also well reflected by the integration of several customer friendly service platforms (such as financial and subscription management tools) in existing banking environments, which the customer can access to get a clear overview on his recurring costs, manage running subscriptions (such as Netflix, Spotify or fitness) etc.
This evolution has been greatly promoted by the introduction of PSD2, i.e. Directive (EU) 2015/2366 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 November 2015 on payment services in the internal market, which has opened the door to innovative services and new providers in the payments market. More particularly, under PSD2, banks are required to grant access to payment accounts for payment initiation service providers (PISPs) and account information service providers (AISPs) (subject of course to the consent of the end-user).
Over the last few years, DLA Piper has assisted multiple market players in finding the optimal legal and operational balance for enrolling these types of integrated products (including subscription cancellation services) throughout Europe. Based on this experience and market practice, this contribution aims to set forth a certain common thread from a (European) legal perspective on bank-integrated subscription cancellation solutions.
and then 