PSD2 - Open Banking for Third Party Providers

Background

The second EU Payment Services Directive (PSD2) introduces some changes to payment services within the European Union. The objective of PSD2 is to create a more uniform, transparent and open EU payment market and bring innovation, competition and security to all the market players.

If you are a third-party service provider seeking access to N26 PSD2 interfaces, you must be licensed by a national regulatory authority. In Germany, this is the Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht (BaFin) in Bonn. You’ll also need a qualified certificate (QWAC). Such certificates can be obtained from Qualified Trusted Service Providers (QTSP).

Dedicated Interface

Our dedicated interface is the REST API which conforms to Berlin Group Implementation Guidelines version 1.3.6 and we also provide a testing environment called Sandbox, with the same specification for testing purposes.

Authorisation protocol: oAuth 2.0.

Note: A valid QWAC Certificate is required to access the Berlin Group API. The official list of QTSP is available on the European Commission eIDAS Trusted List. For the N26 PSD2 Dedicated Interface API, the QWAC Certificate must be issued from a production certificate authority.

Contingency Mechanism 

As part of its legal obligations under PSD2, N26 has implemented a contingency mechanism, which provides the following:

  1. Reliable identification of a TPP via possession of a valid Qualified Website Authentication Certificate (QWAC);
  2. Secure and authorised access to an account

TPPs may access our contingency mechanism via the following URLs:

https://aisp.tech26.de

https://pisp.tech26.de

Access to the above URL and establishing the TLS connection requires implementation of a qualified certificate.

Key documentation & announcements

All key documentation related to our PSD2 interfaces, and key announcements related to changes in our implementation, can be found in N26's public GitHub repository. Specifically, our GitHub repository includes the following:

  • Access documentation
    • PSD2 dedicated interface (AISP, PISP & CBPII)
    • PSD2 fallback interface (AISP & PISP)
    • PSD2 sandbox interface
  • Key announcements
  • FAQs
  • Additional documentation 
    • Open API file
    • Bank transaction codes 
    • Postman collection
    • Quarterly availability and performance reports (from Q4 2019)

We advise that TPPs refer to the repository for the latest information regarding technical documentation and specification. If you would like to be directly informed of any upcoming changes, consider subscribing to our TPP mailing list here.

For inquiries and support related to N26 Open Banking, please use this form.

*Please note that the key announcements and quarterly reports sections have been removed from this webpage and are now only available in the GitHub repository referenced above.

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