Googling PSD2, APIs and Open Banking

I was really interested in a presentation by Benny Boye Johansen, Head of OpenAPI at Saxo Bank, at our recent Nordic Finance Innovation meetings.  In particular, he put up some slides that were both illuminating, amusing and strange.  They were Google Trends charts looking at Payments API, PSD2 and Open Banking.

Google trends tracks the search interest over time and the charts below show searches over the last five years and when it peaks and wanes. 100 = of most interest and 0 = of least.  What is amazing is that Payments API is of most interest to the Americans …

…. PSD2 to the British …

… and Open Banking to the Irish …

Of the three, the Open Banking discussion is getting most focus but I would take some of this with a pinch of salt as, when I looked at trends in Germany, France and Belgium, PSD2 interest is also strong but it’s spotty.  It’s not been consistently and relentlessly moving upwards but, instead, looks more like a steady heartbeat.

Whilst the UK interest, centred around London, is growing all the time.

I thought I would then try the same with Brexit. Brexit is of little interest except when the vote took place back on June 23 2016 but, if we take that out and just look at the past three months, the results are quite intriguing, with interest peaking on March 29:

This was probably because of the Legsit debate.

Nevertheless, there’s consistent interest in all these things but mainly in the English speaking nations.

Ah, there we go.  We need the foreign language translations for PSD2.