Page 46 - FintechAtlas2019

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Slovakia
Forerunner in PSD2 implementation
Skyline of Bratislava, Slovakia
Players in a small market at the heart of the CEE region have the potential to grow across Europe.
Slovakia has moved forward somewhat faster than other European countries in implementing PSD2. The official deadline for all EU Account Servicing Payment Service Providers (ASPSP, financial institutions that offer payment accounts with online access) to comply with the Regulatory Technical Standard of PSD2 was 14th September 2019. Although PSD2 has been live in Slovakia longer than in most EU countries, Slovak banks have yet to implement strong use cases. To date, the only tangible working integration has been between CSOB and Tatra banka, who have collaborated to display multiple accounts from different banks within a single app. The proximity of the Czech market is also apparent, with several Czech banks already connected to Slovak PSD2 APIs.
Slovak companies whose business can clearly benefit from Open Banking (account info and payment initiation) have recently started partnering with fintechs that offer connections to ASPSPs via screen scraping and/or PSD2 APIs.
The National Bank of Slovakia (NBS) has created an Innovation Hub, a platform on which fintechs (Slovak and international) can have direct conversations with the regulator about different use cases. Most specifically, it enables them to identify where regulation/licensing is required. Since the programme was
launched in spring 2019 about 30 project teams have held discussions with the regulator.
The business models that the NBS actively discusses on the Innovation Hub include:
• Alternative payment methods
• Crowdfunding
• Robo-advice
• Cryptoassets and Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) • Insurtech
• Algorithmic trading
The Slovak Fintech Association, a platform dedicated to effective communication between fintechs, regulators, users and the general public was founded in August 2018. The objective of the association is to support the creation and development of fintechs and align the activities of Slovakia and its neighbours.
According to Stack Overflow’s Annual Developer Survey, Slovakia is a genuine leader in the CEE region with 3.7 software developers per 100 members of the working population compared with a CEE average of around 1.3. The four most common areas of activity amongst the 36 fintechs based in the country are payments (six startups), SME services/accounting (five startups) and enterprise processes and big data/analytics (each with four startups).