- Wednesday 17 June 2020
Unless you work in the cutting edge of ‘Fintech’ or the not-quite-as-exciting area of banking compliance, you probably haven’t heard of the Second Payment Service Directive regulation. However this innocuous sounding term has the potential to change the field of personal finance & banking forever, and today we saw the first example.
I’m a long-time holder of a current account with the online bank Revolut, who I find to be so user-friendly and technologically innovative that they put the pillar banks here to shame in many respects. However,I am a cautious person and ongoing questions about the security of their service (though effectively answered really) have kept me from switching to them completely.
What this means is that for me, and the many clients we speak to who also have Revolut accounts, is that I get paid into a standard ‘Irish’ bank account (in my case, PTSB) from which most standing orders & direct debits are paid. I wire my ‘living expenses allowance’ (nice phrase I know!) to Revolut and use that for the remainder of the month as it allows for Apple Pay, instant transfers where required and, most importantly, in depth analysis of my spending habits. Yes, I work in personal finance……
The gap in my monthly budgeting was that I could only assess my discretionary spending, as the ‘fixed’ and ‘variable’ costs were coming from the PTSB account.
Well, thanks to the SPSD, all that has changed. This morning I was able to link my PTSB account to the Revolut app, giving me the option of true monthly spending analysis from the top down.
The opening up of your bank’s data (well, your data really) for access by other programs through API is going to be a game-changer. Expect to see products and services, some obvious, others crazily innovative, over the coming months and years that really will revolutionise money management. I can’t wait and neither should you.
Use of online banking services can help hugely with short & long term financial planning – budgeting, saving & investing. To find out how we utilise these technologies, contact team@curranfutures.ie for complementary consultation or visit www.curranfutures.ie
