Visa and Plaid Abandon Merger After Antitrust Division’s Suit to Block

Furthermore, "open" banking is very misleading because it's only open to corporations with deep pockets to obtain an AISP license/certification*, but doesn't even allow the account holder to gain API access to their own account. Unless you're lucky enough to be with a modern bank that provides that as a feature (which is legally separate from Open Banking, though often it's the same API), your only workaround is to sign up for TrueLayer yourself just to access your own account through them.

* given the "deep pockets" requirement, it almost forces all the account aggregator apps/services (Emma, Yolt, etc) to have a somewhat scummy business model and monetize the captured data. Wouldn't it have been nicer that you didn't need deep pockets to gain read-only access, so that an indie developer could make such an account aggregator and not have to resort to a scummy business model to fund the certification/compliance expenses?

Additionally the U.K. has generally been on the leading edge of open banking, which is why our standards weren’t identical to the EUs for a while. It’s going nowhere, and pass-porting will make no difference.

The only real impact of Brexit is the open banking entities will need to register separately in the U.K. and the EU, and be subject to two different regulators. But that’s just paperwork for the most part.

It's not that simple. The FCA is no longer an EEA National Competent Authority and UK Third Party Providers must register with an EEA NCA to continue to operate in the EEA. Domestic legislation which put PSD2 in force is of course still UK law, and domestic TPPs and Account Servicing Payment Service Providers can continue to operate together (even using the same eiDAS certs), but they cannot engage in open banking with the rest of the EU/EEA.

PSD2 and its supporting institutions (EBA, EPC, ECJ) no longer apply to the UK.

> Additionally the U.K. has generally been on the leading edge of open banking, which is why our standards weren’t identical to the EUs for a while. It’s going nowhere, and pass-porting will make no difference.

Internally, maybe, but UK TPPs and ASPSPs can no longer interoperate with EU/EEA TPPs and ASPSPs unless they register with an EU/EEA NCA, and thus become subject to EU Directives. Again it comes back to your definition of "open banking". If you mean only UK banks and firms being able to operate an open banking scheme, then you are correct that this will continue. If you mean open banking as defined by PSD2, it has already come to an end in the UK.

> The only real impact of Brexit is the open banking entities will need to register separately in the U.K. and the EU, and be subject to two different regulators. But that’s just paperwork for the most part.

So either UK TPPs and ASPSPs have to abide by EU Directives (if possible - the UK legislature may diverge from the EU in unreconcilable ways), or the UK has to maintain alignment with the EU indefinitely. Doesn't seem like just paperwork to me.

In antitrust law, intent matters. If your primary motivating intent is to make the market less competitive, that's what gets the book thrown at you. That's why it can be so hard to prosecute antitrust, because it's pretty easy to lie your way out as long as there's no direct proof of intent.

Let's take Facebook's acquisition of Instagram. Did they buy Instagram because they saw Instagram as a threat, or did they buy Instagram because they wanted to acquire their talent and improve their product? For a long time, you could argue it was the latter case, which warded off antitrust suits. Recently, some emails came to light where they explicitly talked about taking out Instagram because they were beginning to pose a threat. Now there's a smoking gun and a strong case to be made, which may well be prosecuted in the near future.