Banks and payment institutions evaluating A2A infrastructure face the same question: open banking, direct integration standards, or both? Most get the trade-off wrong because they read "open banking" as modern and "direct integration" as legacy. Neither label is accurate.

This full episode walks through the actual architectural difference and what it means for what merchants can offer.

What open banking is: regulatory APIs that every European bank must provide under PSD2. Compliance-focused, fixed feature set, designed primarily for payment links and e-commerce redirects. Works well for "Pay with Bank" buttons at checkout. Doesn't support BLE proximity, audio-triggered payments, optimised app-to-app flows, or most of what makes A2A interesting outside e-commerce.

What direct integration standards are: protocol-based payment infrastructure that banks opt into. Same standardised protocol for every participating bank - not custom integrations. Designed by the payment network, evolves at network pace rather than regulatory pace, supports all seven initiation methods.

Five concrete contexts compared head-to-head: e-commerce checkout (tie - both work fine), in-store QR (direct integration standards win on app-to-app flow), drive-through BLE proximity (only direct integration standards support it), live event audio triggers (only direct integration standards support it), recurring subscriptions (tie).

Coverage versus depth: a direct integration standard typically covers 60-75% of transaction volume through 10-15 strategic banks. Open banking covers 100% of accounts but with basic features. The hybrid model is what serious payment networks actually run - direct integration standards where the volume concentrates, open banking as fallback for the long tail.

The strategic point: open banking is the compliance baseline, not the innovation ceiling. PSD3 will raise the baseline, but standards keep moving faster than regulation. The choice isn't "which one" but "in what proportion and sequence."

For payment institutions evaluating A2A infrastructure, banks deciding what to offer beyond regulatory minimums, and merchants wondering why one provider's "A2A" is much narrower than another's.

Full source material and the complete comparison: https://go.payware.eu/p-direct-vs-open-f

Produced by payware - the transaction resolution network for instant A2A payments.

AI-generated from payware's published research and documentation.