What XS2A means
The abbreviation XS2A stands for "access to account" and refers to the regulated access to payment accounts at banks and Sparkassen in the European Union according to the EU Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2).
The XS2A interface of the Sparkassen and Landesbanken follows the Berlin Group specification and is implemented via RESTful Services (Representational State Transfer). You can use payment accounts, i.e. private and business current accounts, for which the customer has approved the use by Third Party Providers (TPP).
Your most important features
Connection of payment accounts
Thanks to PSD2, you can access private and business current accounts with online banking access with the consent of the account holders.
Retrieval of account lists
Depending on the account type, you receive the IBAN, account currency and the institution-specific product name of the account as well as the turnover. Posted balances are transferred to you with currency and date.
Query period > 90 days
Under certain conditions, the retrieval may provide you with turnovers older than 90 days – separate customer consent may have to be obtained for this.
Trigger payments
Via the XS2A interface, you submit payment orders for individual, collective, real-time and forward transfers.
Background to PSD2
What XS2A can do
With the implementation of the European Directive PSD2 (Payment Services Directive 2), a number of changes have occurred for payment services. One of the main objectives of PSD2 is to promote competition and innovation in the field of payment services.
The most important change for customers of Sparkassen and Landesbanken is that they can give regulated third parties access to their payment accounts according to PSD2. For customers, this means that they can also use applications and services of account information services and payment initiation services – i.e. services that are not offered by their account-holding institution. The explicit permission of the customers is required for this.
→ For more information, see the FAQs.
380
Institutions
With wallis.XS2A you have access to the payment accounts of around 380 Sparkassen and Landesbanken as well as Weberbank.
50 million
Payment Accounts
In total, around 50 million current accounts are managed by the members of the Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe (incl. accounts without online banking access).
What you need to know
The XS2A interface of the Sparkassen offers you a high level of reliability. The dedicated interface of the Sparkassen and Landesbanken fulfills the requirements of Article 33(6) of Delegated Regulation (EU) 2018/389. The Sparkassen and Landesbanken have therefore been exempted from providing an emergency mechanism in accordance with Article 33(4).
In order to use the API, you must meet the following requirements:
To access Sparkassen accounts as a Third Party Provider (TPP), you must have a PSD2 licence issued by a competent supervisory authority. In Germany, the locally competent supervisory authority is the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin).
If you have received a PSD2 licence from another local supervisory authority within the European Union, you will need a so-called passporting in order to be able to use this licence in Germany.
You need an EIDAS certificate that is used for identification. Bundesdruckerei is a possible so-called trust centre that issues both the test and the real certificates for access to the XS2A interfaces to authorised TPPs.