PSD2 and open banking

In 2019, with the PSD2 directive coming into force, Europe finished drawing a new map for digital money. The underlying idea sounds almost obvious once you hear it: banking data belongs to the customer, not the bank. And if it belongs to the customer, they should be able to authorize other companies—with their explicit permission—to access that information or initiate payments on their behalf. We call that open banking, and the lever that made it possible was APIs: standardized connection points that let two systems talk to each other securely.

It may seem like a distant, European, banking topic. But the change matters for any Mexican small or midsize business that invoices, collects payments, pays suppliers, or reconciles bank statements by hand. What started as a regulation on another continent became a different way of understanding a business’s financial operations: fewer manual entries, fewer files being passed around, and more reliable information flowing between your systems and your bank.

What changed with open banking

Before, your company’s information lived locked inside each bank’s portal. If you wanted to know how much came in yesterday, someone logged in, downloaded a file, and entered it somewhere else. Open banking proposes the opposite: that this data can travel, with your authorization, to the tools where you actually use it.

In practice, PSD2 pushed two capabilities that today are the foundation of almost everything interesting in digital finance:

• Account information access. Your systems can read balances and transactions automatically, without anyone downloading anything by hand.
• Payment initiation. An authorized application can trigger a transfer directly, without leaving your own workflow.
• Reinforced security. Access requires strong customer authentication, so opening up the data doesn’t mean loosening control.
• Explicit consent. Nothing is shared without the account owner authorizing it, and that permission can be revoked.

Open banking doesn’t give your data away: it gives you back control over who you lend it to and for what.

Why this helps a Mexican business

Mexico has moved in the same direction with its own open banking framework, and the ecosystem of institutions and platforms exposing financial APIs has kept growing. For a small or midsize business, the promise isn’t technological for the sake of fashion: it’s recovered time and decisions made with up-to-date information.

Think about the tasks that consume hours today and are prone to error: reconciling what the bank says against what your system says, confirming that a customer has already paid before releasing an order, or scheduling transfers to suppliers one by one. All of that can be connected. When your software and your bank talk to each other through an API, reconciliation stops being a full day at the end of the month and becomes something that happens on its own, in the background.

The valuable part is that you don’t have to replace what already works. You keep your data, your processes, and your history; what gets added is an integration layer that makes the pieces work together.

From theory to your operation

The concrete applications tend to be more grounded than one imagines:

• Automatic reconciliation: cross-checking bank transactions against your invoices and payments without entering anything.
• Real-time payment confirmation: releasing a shipment or activating a service the moment the deposit comes in.
• Integrated supplier payments: triggering disbursements from your own system, with a trail of who authorized what.
• Dashboards with up-to-date money: seeing current cash flow without depending on manual downloads.

None of these ideas requires a giant project. The key is to pick a real, measurable pain point and solve it first.

Connect your bank to your systems

If open banking sounds useful but you don’t know where to lay the first brick, here’s a sensible path:

• Spot the process that costs you the most time. It’s usually reconciliation or payment confirmation. Start with just one and with clear goals.
• Check which APIs your bank or payment platform offers. Not all expose the same thing; it’s worth knowing before you design.
• Define what data you’ll share and with whom. Consent and security aren’t a formality: they’re part of the design.
• Build on top of what you already have. Custom software that connects to your current system, instead of forcing you to migrate everything.
• Measure the before and after. Hours saved, errors avoided, closing days reduced. With numbers it’s easier to decide the next step.

The open banking that Europe formalized in 2019 stopped being a regulatory curiosity and became a practical way to operate. At Normandia Web we help Mexican businesses connect their finances to their systems through custom integrations: we start with a concrete case, measure it, and, once it proves its value, we grow it. If you want to explore what this would look like in your operation, let’s talk and design it together.