What is Berlin Group ?

The Berlin Group, which currently has participation of 26 major players in the payments industry from 10 different euro-zone countries, representing more than 25 billion card-originated transactions annually within the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA). The Berlin group was formed to fill in some of the gaps left in PSD2 concerning cross-bank or European-wide API standards. Such standards, which ensure uniformity across basic open banking interfaces and processes, are important to achieve a unified open banking ecosystem for financial products.

To this end, the Berlin Group defined a standard API protocol known as NextGenPSD2 for open banking. While other standardisation initiatives have been launched, the Berlin Group, along with Open Banking, are the most advanced.