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Account Number portability (ANP) is set to be a game-changing year for retail banking in EU. As the PSD2 (Revised Directive on Payment Services Directive) becomes implemented, Customer are provided with various option such as AISP, PISP, Account Portability.
All would have heard of Mobile Number Portability (MNP) where customer have the choice of having same mobile number but with different service provider. ANP (Account Number portability) is flexibility provided to customers to port their accounts (restricted to Personal / Business Current accounts only) across banks in EU zone. Only very few bank offer such services to attract more customer. ANP is an innovation boom for the customer to shift to any of the bank who provide better service, technology and customer service.
EU is encouraging bank to use Payment Account Directive (PAD) method to switch accounts across Banks. The following process are followed while transferring account from one bank to another
How does Payment system work for the newly ported account number?
Once the account numbers are ported, Banks provide unique IBAN (International Bank Account number to each account in EU Zone. This IBAN number helps to find the contra account i.e. customer account number when any payment is processed through any payment system (SWIFT, BACS, Direct Debits, CHAPs).There will be delinking old account number with new bank account number and same IBAN number could be used for all payment services once the account is successfully transferred.
Bank should follow few common alias numbers mapping with old account number. Banks have to invest in their Core banking system, mobile banking, and internet banking system to show the Alias number across channel to the customer. This is to ensure the customer still use the same old account number along with alias number for easy reference.
Advantages of Account number Portability:
Overall, Bank needs to update their system to enable account number portability as additional features to attract customers from competitors. More over Banks are provided opportunity to tap deposit accounts from ANP customer if Banks provide better service quality, rates offered are better than others in the market.
This content is provided by an external author without editing by Finextra. It expresses the views and opinions of the author.
Arthur Azizov CEO at B2BINPAY
20 December
Sonali Patil Cloud Solution Architect at TCS
Retired Member
Andrew Ducker Payments Consulting at Icon Solutions
19 December
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