Machine learning and biometrics: financial services market in the middle of a revolution

Despite the enormous changes in recent years, including the emergence of the plethora of significant new market players – including fintech start-ups, established payment, technology, and information firms, telecoms, and other providers, the financial services market is indeed in the middle of a revolution and this is down to both technology and regulations. This begs the question of how financial services incumbents will fare is far from settled and offers a scenario wherein these incumbents looking to grow shareholder value will need to build and sustain new competitive advantages. The European Commission's revised Payment Service Directive (PSD2) represents a broad sweep of financial services sector regulations that will come into force next year. In summary, PSD2 creates the opportunity for digital actors to link directly into payment systems via API's. The regulation will require that banks provide these API's so that third-party service providers will be able to directly access customers' accounts.