Belgium’s payments system is built on years of interbank connections, digital access and real-time payments. Belgium is the birthplace of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), the largest network for cross-border payments and settlement, host to the second highest number of passported third party providers (under PSD2) and has an international banking sector (80% foreign banks).

Belgium is also exploring the data-sharing potential of open banking with Itsme®, a widely used identity-verification and digital signature app.

If you are a payments service provider (PSP) that wants to offer open banking to your Belgian customers, you’re in the right place.

This article discusses:

• Belgium’s open banking timeline: From Bancontact to Open Banking
• The future of open banking adoption in Belgium
• Why use Yapily’s open banking infrastructure in Belgium
• How Volume is eliminating hidden fees with Yapily

Ready to offer open banking to your Belgian customers? Talk to an open banking expert at Yapily today

Timeline: From Bancontact to Open Banking

1989: Mister Cash and Bancontact merged to form Banksys. Later rebranded as Bancontact, the company became a pioneer in digital payments and the backbone of the domestic Belgian payment system.

2008: SEPA was introduced.) to participating countries like Belgium.

2015: The EU introduced PSD2, setting the foundation for open banking across European nations.

2017: Major Belgian banks and telecom operators launched Itsme®, a digital identity app enabling secure logins, data retrieval from official documents, and digital signatures. Itsme® quickly became a cornerstone of Belgium’s open banking adoption, providing the digital identity layer needed for customers to safely authenticate and share data with TPPs.

• By 2022, 80% of Belgian adults (aged 18–90) were using the app, with about 7 million users across Europe.
• Each month, Belgians carried out 25–35 million Itsme® operations, 35% more than monthly mobile payments nationwide.
• Itsme® gave TPPs access to verified user data (e.g., name, address, email), reducing friction in onboarding and payment flows.
• It also reduced phishing fraud by 25% (€9 million less lost), since users no longer needed to share bank codes to log in or confirm transactions.

2018: Belgium formally adopted PSD2 as national law, commencing open banking implementation.

• Bancontact Company and Payconiq Belgium merged to form Bancontact Payconiq Company.
• BNP Paribas Fortis partnered with open banking platform Tink to provide new financial services.
• In November, Belgium joined the TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS), enabling 24/7 instant settlement.

2021: UniCredit Bank Austria, which operates in Belgium, launched multi-banking capabilities that let 800,000 customers view and manage accounts from different banks in one app. This set a precedent for how PSD2 could enable integrated digital banking services.

2023: Adoption grew as 29 Belgian banks actively implemented open banking, enabling users to initiate payments and share data with third-party providers (TPPs) through secure APIs.

2024 Belgium became the EU nation with the second highest number of TPPs (16 domestic and 157 passported TPPs).

Bancontact and Payconiq together processed 2.5 billion payments, cementing their role as Belgium’s domestic payments backbone.

The future of open banking adoption in Belgium

The National Bank of Belgium (NBB) has played a crucial role in endorsing European guidelines and fostering a conducive environment to open banking growth. It adopted PSD2 and will implement the recommendations of the EU’s Payment Services Regulation (PSR), the Third Payment Services Directive (PSD3) and Financial Data Access regulation (FiDA) which will steer Belgian Payments towards open finance and open data.

Belgium is also part of The Berlin Group which works to help banks and TPPs share data and initiate payments without technical barriers. The group is developing an open finance framework

In Q1 2022, Belgium had 14 home TPPs and 103 passported TPPs. Since then, adoption has grown by an additional 2 domestic TPPs and 54 passported TPPs.

In 2018, 80% of Belgians surveyed about sharing information with third parties wanted to be able to cancel authorisation on a case-by-case basis. While 58% wanted to revoke their permission whenever they deemed fit. PSR. PSD3 and FiDA will achieve this by mandating banks to create a dashboard from which customers can manage TPPs’ access to their financial information. With more control over data access and education on the upsides of open banking, consumers and businesses may be more open to exploring different use cases.

Why use Yapily’s open banking infrastructure in Belgium

Yapily provides open banking infrastructure that lets PSPs build and scale secure payment solutions for customers. Here are three reasons to choose Yapily as your open banking partner in Belgium.

Broad coverage across Belgium, the EU, and the UK

We connect with almost 2,000 banks across the EU and the UK. This means Yapily can grow with your brand, whether you focus on Belgium or the pan-European market We connect with Belgian banks like ABN AMRO Belgium (Corporate), CBC Belgium, and KBC Belgium.

The quality of an open banking solution’s coverage matters. Some solutions focus on consumer accounts, but Yapily’s API connects with consumer, wealth, business, and corporate accounts. This enables you to serve B2B and B2C businesses effectively.

Our API is thoroughly tested and reliable, letting you minimise downtime and maximise trust and profits.

Completely customise the payment experience with our white-labelled and hosted pages

If you prefer a fully white labelled solution without keeping customers waiting and risking churn, use our hosted pages while building the fully customised version. Our hosted pages have limited customisations. With hosted pages, you can quickly integrate open banking into your apps and platforms to increase conversions and provide a fallback for your customers’ clients when other payment options fail.

Our white labelled infrastructure lets you tailor your customers’ payments and data experience. You can customise the UI, branding, and user journey to suit your target customers.

Support a variety of payment options and data services with one API

Yapily offers both payment initiation services (PIS) and account information services (AIS) services. This means once you partner with us, there’ll be no need to juggle multiple providers; you can offer pay by bank or data services, or both.

Our payment services are broad and flexible, including cVRPs, sweeping VRPs, VRPs, Bulk payments, single payments, domestic and international payments.

You’ll also access data services, including data enrichment and transaction monitoring services which provide detailed transaction categorisation and merchant identification.

How Volume is eliminating hidden fees with Yapily

London-based fintech, Volume, is a payments startup that offers account-to-account payments without hidden fees. Businesses and consumers using card payments paid extra-transaction fees, waited days for settlement, and faced risks of phishing attacks on online checkouts. Merchants have to pay 2% - 8% of every transaction to card, e-wallet and Buy Now Pay Later facilitators.

Volume’s founders dreamt of a payment solution that “*put more money back in the hands of consumers and merchants.” *To achieve this, they partnered with Yapily and are helping businesses lower transaction fees to below 1% using open banking. They also lowered the average payment settlement time down to just 2.5 seconds and raised checkout conversion rates by up to 250%.

Learn more about Yapily’s collaboration with Volume.

Offer open banking to your Belgian customers today

Open banking in Belgium presents businesses with potential new solutions, cost-effectiveness and instant EU-wide account-to-account payments. You can help Belgian SMEs and startups explore ways to improve their customer experience by telling them about the perks and security measures of open banking and offering Pay by Bank options to early adopters.

Speak to an open banking expert at Yapily to get started.