Glossary
PSD2
PSD2, Directive (EU) 2015/2366, is the European Union's framework for payment services: it defines which activities need a licence as a payment or e-money institution, requires strong customer authentication for electronic payments, and obliges banks to give licensed third parties access to customers' accounts for payment initiation and account information, which is Open Banking in Europe. Its article 3(j) excludes technical service providers that never hold funds from the licence requirement.
What it regulates and what it excludes
Licensed payment services include acquiring, money remittance, payment initiation and account information. Excluded are, among others, technical service providers that support those services without entering into possession of the funds: processing and storing data, authentication, IT and network provision. The successor framework, PSR and PSD3, keeps the structure and the exclusion.
Why it matters to a payment business
The licence decides who may contract with merchants and hold their money; SCA decides how a checkout looks in Europe; Open Banking under PSD2 is the source of the pay-by-bank methods in the EU catalogue, provided by licensed payment initiation providers.
On the platform
Tranzify is a technical service provider in the sense of article 3(j): it never holds funds and provides no payment service; its clients are the licensed institutions, and the Open Banking providers in the catalogue hold the payment initiation licences. The regulatory status page lists the equivalent provisions in other jurisdictions.
Updated: 2026-11-08