Open Banking and ERP Integration Maturity
What is Open Banking/PSD2 for corporate services and corporate ERP integration?
Open Banking/PSD2 in Business Banking
There are many reasons for commercial banking departments to allow their small and medium-sized companies to be able to see the total liquidity they have, held at different banks and bank accounts.
The main business case is based on cash visibility, which most corporate treasurers would like to improve. Supply chain finance is another important one. Banks are trying to find ways to route as many financial transactions via their institution instead of allowing them to be dealt with by bookkeeping platforms (ERP), fintechs, open market ecosystems, etcetera.
One way to do this is through Open Banking. The retail side of banks has shown how fast such developments can go. These examples may sound logical, but in reality it turns out to be very difficult to accomplish this.
The challenge lies in the maturity of Open Banking APIs. These APIs allow for real-time, intraday and overall cash visibility. That is a luxury many finance departments of SMEs can only dream of.
Challanges
The main challenge for banks to get this right is:
- The Open Banking APIs of banks lack standardization which makes it very difficult to stream data to generic output fields.
- Many APIs only support balance data and lack the underlying transaction data.
- An authorized person on the company side needs to provide a formal consent, every 90 days.
- Banks cannot rely on so-called aggregators yet have mainly focused on retail banking and support limited business accounts;
- If a corporate client of a bank has branches and accounts around the world the chances of being complete and correct with PSD2 are close to zero as Open Banking has mainly started in Europe and certain parts of Asia.
The above items create a situation in which it is virtually impossible to even serve a medium-sized company in Europe with several international subsidiaries and multiple-bank relationships. However, some banks are quite far in offering rather complete Open Banking APIs for a limited number of banks and regions with which they hope to be able to serve a majority of their front-running clients. The good news is that these banks are learning a lot on how to get this right.
Why Open Banking for Corporates Is Still a Work in Progress
While retail open banking has advanced rapidly, the corporate side is more complex. SMEs with multiple banks and subsidiaries often cannot yet access full real‑time balances across all accounts. Even leading institutions struggle with API coverage, data quality and regional differences.
Tracking the maturity curve of open banking means recognising where each bank – and each region – stands today, and prioritising integration partners that can already deliver reliable multi‑bank data for the majority of front‑running clients.
ERP Integration as the Second Critical Curve
The second maturity curve relates to how well banks connect to clients’ internal systems such as ERPs, accounting tools and TMS solutions. Without ERP connectivity, banks only see historical balances, not future‑dated flows such as invoices, orders or budgets.
Combining open banking data with ERP integration enables advanced use cases: accurate cash flow forecasting, automated hedging, and recommendation engines that propose the right credit, FX or investment product at the right time. Banks that invest early in both curves position themselves as long‑term digital partners for corporate treasurers.
Contact TreasurUp
Contact us to schedule a demo or join 1,300+ banking leaders and subscribe to TreasurUpdate to stay updated on the latest trends, regulations, and product innovations in online business banking, including practical developments around stablecoins and digital cash.