双语阅读｜欧洲支付领域迎来新洗牌
IN BRITAIN alone millions of people make formal complaints each year about their banks. For them, Sebastian Siemiatkowski, founder of Klarna, a Swedish pay¬ments startup, brings good news. New European rules, he says, will open the door to a host of innovative services that ana¬lyse transactions, so “an app could tell you there’s a cheaper mortgage available and start the switching process for you.” Apps could warn account-holders if they spend more than a predetermined amount or are about to become overdrawn, or even nudge them to save more. Customers need barely ever interact with their bank.
仅在英国，每年投诉银行的人数就达到数百万人。瑞典支付创业企业Klarna的创始人塞巴斯蒂安-谢米亚特科斯基(Sebastian Siemiatkowski）给他们带来了来福音。他表示，欧洲一项新法规将为一系列金融创新服务打开大门：这类服务会对客户的交易记录进行分析，“仅需一个应用就能提醒你其实还有更加低息的贷款项目，并为你切换到相应的手续。”一旦发现账户支出超过了预设金额，或有透支的可能，这类应用还会及时警告用户，甚至帮助他们省钱。因此，消费者几乎用不着跟银行打交道。
To date, despite dire warnings, Euro¬pean retail banking has been remarkably unscathed by technology-driven disrup¬tion. Customers stay loyal, and banks still do the most of the lending. Financial-tech¬nology (“fintech”) companies are begin¬ning to mount a challenge, most conspicu¬ously in the online-payments industry in northern Europe: Sofort, iDEAL and other fintech firms conduct over half of online transactions in Germany and the Nether¬lands, for example. But their reach is more limited elsewhere in Europe. Physical pay¬ments are still overwhelmingly made with cash or bank cards.
目前为止，尽管面临各种前景惨淡的预警，欧洲的零售银行在这场科技冲击中并没受到什么影响：消费者依旧忠诚、贷款业务依旧是银行的天下。虽然金融科技公司正逐步崭露头角，大致体现在北欧的线上支付行业，如Sofort, iDEAL等互联网金融公司在德国和荷兰占据了线上交易的半壁江山。在欧洲其他国家，这些公司就没那么风光了。线下支付主要还是依靠现金和银行卡。
One reason incumbents have proved so resilient is that fintech firms lack the cus¬tomer-transaction information they need to provide many financial services. Banks can be slow to respond to requests for access to such data, or may block them alto¬gether for security reasons. It is often either cumbersome or insecure for customers to share their own information. Banks, on the other hand, have easy access to transaction data, which they can use to sell their cus¬tomers other services.
银行之所以能够保持不败之地，一个原因在于互联网金融企业缺少必需的消费者交易信息，进而很多基于此的金融服务便无法展开。向银行索要这些数据时，银行会延迟提供、甚至以安全威胁为由拒绝提供。通常，消费者向第三方授权提供个人信息很是繁琐且不安全。相反，银行可以轻易地获得消费者交易数据，进而向他们兜售其他服务。
Regulators, however, are about to trans¬form the landscape. The Payments Ser¬vices Directive 2 (PSD2), due to be imple-mented by EU members in January 2018, aims to kick-start competition while mak¬ing payments more secure. Provided the customer has given explicit consent, banks will be forced to share customer-account information with licensed financial-ser¬vices providers.
然而，监管机构将改变这一现状。欧洲议会通过了一项支付服务法令（The Payments Ser¬vices Directive 2，以下简称PSD2），将于2018年一月份在全欧盟范围内实施，旨在提高竞争并增强支付安全。届时，一旦消费者明确同意，银行必须将消费者的账户信息提供给获得许可的金融服务商。
This should change the way payment services work. They could become more integrated into the internet-browsing expe-rience-enabling, for example, one-click bank transfers, at least for low-value pay¬ments. Security for payments above €30 ($32) will be tightened up, with customers having to provide two pieces of secret in¬formation (“strong authentication”) to wave through a transaction.
此新法规或许会改变现行的支付服务模式。支付将变成网页形式的体验，比如银行转账只要点击一下鼠标就能完成，至少小额支付可以如此。金额超过30欧元（约224人民币）的支付，将加强安全审核，消费者必须提供两条私密信息（“强度身份认证”）才能完成交易。
With access to account data, mean¬while, fintech firms could offer customers budgeting advice, or guide them towards higher-interest savings accounts or cheap¬er mortgages. Those with limited credit his¬tories may find it easier to borrow, too, since richer transaction data should mean more sophisticated credit checks.
同时，有了账户数据，互联网金融企业可以为消费者提供预算建议、指导消费者选择高息存款类型或者低息贷款项目。个人信用历史较少的消费者可能更容易获得信用贷款，毕竟交易数据越多意味着信用审核越复杂。
None of this is good news for estab¬lished banks. Profitability is already threat¬ened by rock-bottom interest rates. Accord¬ing to Deloitte, a consultancy, banks’ lockhold on payments serves as a handy source of income, earning European banks €i28bn in 2015, around a quarter of retail¬banking revenue. Many see PSD2 as a threat to their business models; they fear becoming the “dumb pipes” of the finan¬cial system. In a survey conducted last year by Strategy®, a unit of Pwc, a professional- services firm, 68% of responding banks be¬lieved that PDS2 would leave them in a weaker position. The same proportion feared that they would lose control of in¬teractions with customers.
以上信息对于既有的银行来说绝不是好消息。受基准利率的影响，银行的盈利能力颇受打击。德勤咨询（Deloitte）表示，针对支付服务收取的手续费一向是银行的一笔既轻松又稳定的收入，在2015年就达到了1,280亿欧元，接近零售银行收入总额的1/4。多家银行认为PSD2是对其经营模式的一大威胁；他们担心成为金融体系中的“笨水管”(“dumb pipes”)。普华永道（PWC）旗下的咨询公司思略特（Strategy）去年进行的一项调查显示，68%的受访银行认为PDS2会让他们处于弱势地位，担心会因此失去与消费者互动的主动权。
Perhaps predictably, resistance is mani¬fested as a concern about data protection: more than half of respondents to the pwc survey voiced concerns about security and liability. Such concerns are legitimate but also, argue fintech supporters, offer a con¬venient excuse for banks to block competi¬tion. Newcomers will be regulated, after all, and will have to convince the authori¬ties that their data-protection systems are robust. As they are also required to be in¬sured against losses from fraud, they will need to convince insurers, too. They will not be subject to the same capital and stress-testing requirements banks face: but nor will they be licensed to undertake the riskier business of lending.
也许可以推测，银行对PSD2 如此抗拒是出于对数据保护的担忧：在普华永道的调查中，超过一半的受访银行表示出对于安全性和可靠性的担忧。这种忧虑合情合理，同时，互联网金融企业的支持者们则认为，这是银行用来拒绝竞争的一个很好借口。新的行业进入者势必会受到监管限制，他们还必须要向监管机构证明自己的数据保护系统是过硬的。同时，按照规定，这些企业必须提交保险，以降低信用欺诈带来的损失。因此，他们还要说服保险公司。互联网金融企业不会面临与银行同等的资金要求和压力测试（stress-testing），同样的，他们也无权限承担更高风险的借贷业务。
For his part, Klarna’s Mr Siemiatkowski thinks PSD2 is “perfect on paper”. But he worries that, as implementation ap¬proaches, the rules will be watered down. Banks could also interpret them subjec¬tively: they might delay sharing data or make them too confusing to be useful. But regulators have already bared their teeth: last year German competition authorities, citing the changes proposed in PSD2, ruled that banks were illegally restricting cus¬tomers’ online-banking activities.
谢米亚特科斯基表示，PSD2对于金融科技公司来说更多的是“知易行难”。他担心，这一政策真正实施起来各项规定都会受到弱化。同时，银行可能会主观解读各项规定：可能会延迟分享数据或者提供的数据表意不明无法使用。不过，监管机构明确得表达了变革决心：去年，德国的竞争管理机构引述了PSD2中修改的部分，裁定银行限制消费者进行在线银行业务的行为是非法的。
编译：王朦晰
审校：郭娜
编辑：翻吧君
来源：经济学人