Open Banking Picks a Lane: PSD3 Edges Forward, FiDA Wobbles, Core Banking Finally Ships
As of late October 2026, Europe's open banking agenda is splitting in two: PSD3 and the PSR are moving to print, FiDA is still in the trilogue weeds, and the real action has shifted to the core banking stack where the API economy actually gets built.
For most of 2026, open banking has been a story told in Brussels corridors. This week, the storyline moved to the engine room. PSD3 and the PSR crept closer to adoption, the Financial Data Access regulation (FiDA) kept wobbling, and core banking providers quietly posted the kind of growth and personnel moves that tell you where the money is actually going. If payments regulation sets the rules of the game, core banking is the playing field. Both got refreshed this month.
PSD3 and the PSR: Formal Approval, Delayed Reality
The reform of EU payments law is split in two: PSD3, a directive that each member state must transpose, and the Payment Services Regulation (PSR), a directly applicable text that binds banks the moment it enters into force. Following the provisional political deal in November 2025, the final texts went to Council representatives on April 22, 2026, with the Council's formal note following on April 23, 2026, according to Morrison Foerster and KPMG analyses. As of this week, confirmation of final adoption and Official Journal publication is still pending. One law firm's reading, cited by JD Supra, expects the practical effective date to land in late 2027.
PSD3 and the PSR together push three things harder than today's PSD2: prescriptive API quality (with less room for member-state fragmentation), consent and dashboard rights for consumers, and a sharper fraud liability regime. Nuvei's compliance guide and Deloitte Luxembourg's analysis both flag the API quality rules as the operational change that will cost most to implement.
FiDA: Still Stuck in the EU Pipework
The Financial Data Access (FiDA) regulation, which extends open banking logic to savings, pensions, insurance and credit, is less lucky. Banking.Vision notes that FiDA has been shaped during 2026 as a lighter, more consumer-centric text, and the European Parliament's ECON committee has been finalising its position. Mastercard still describes FiDA as carrying uncertainty around whether, when and in what form the proposal will be adopted. The European Digital Finance Association notes the Commission has signalled it will support co-legislators in reaching political agreement in 2026. Industry forecasts (see Crassula) now place a practical operational date around 2029 to 2030.
FiDA is where open finance either happens at scale in Europe or it quietly does not. A slow legislative path lets US and Asian open-finance models harden first, which would reset who writes the standards. The next six months in Brussels matter more than the next six months of product launches.
Core Banking Modernisation: The Real Market Shift
While Brussels dithers, the core banking market is where capital and personnel moves are actually landing.
10x Banking Crosses 10 Million Live Accounts
10x Banking announced it had surpassed 10 million live accounts on its cloud-native SuperCore platform, with ARR growth of 30% in the past 12 months. The company's H2 2026 roadmap names product launches, migrations and customer go-lives across New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and Thailand. Core banking modernisation is now a Southern Hemisphere and emerging-markets growth story, not just a European or North American one.
Thought Machine's $100 Million Milestone
Thought Machine crossed the $100 million revenue mark for the year ending December 2025 and raised 30 million pounds (about $41 million) from a Tier 1 bank client, according to Finovate. A client funding its own vendor is as much a strategic lock-in as a financing event: the bank cannot easily afford for the vendor to drift.
Temenos Resets Its Technology Leadership
Temenos, the Geneva-listed veteran of core banking, is in a visible transition. Shares hit a 52-week low of 59.20 CHF on July 23, 2026, per finanzen.ch, after revenue for the quarter ending June 30 fell about 5.75% year on year. Chief Product and Technology Officer Barb Morgan stepped down, with Tony Coleman named CTO and Cormac Flanagan appointed CPO. The split of the role is a bet that product and technology deserve dedicated leadership rather than a combined post.
Mawarid Finance: Full Core Migration, BaaS Twist
In the UAE, Mawarid Finance completed a full core banking migration from legacy Oracle Flexcube to a new platform running on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, per IBS Intelligence. A second phase focused on API-driven fintech integration was slated for August 2026. In parallel, Mawarid signed a strategic agreement with Turkish core banking provider Fimple at the Mawarid Fintech Summit 2026 to deploy a Side Core Banking layer alongside its existing systems, per Zawya. Full migrations are expensive and risky. Side-core deployments let a bank add new product capability without rip-and-replace trauma.
Tuum and Bank CenterCredit: Dual-Core, Live in Central Asia
Although first announced in September 2025, the Tuum and Bank CenterCredit BaaS proposition in Kazakhstan continues to attract attention this quarter, per The Paypers. The bank runs Tuum alongside its legacy stack to introduce new products without full-scale system replacement. It is the operating model that Mawarid and others are now copying.
BaaS Finally Picks a Lane
The through-line of October is that BaaS is no longer trying to be everything. It is picking lanes: cards and embedded investing (Shares and Treezor), B2B embedded lending (finmid, SIDES Capital), supermarket deposits (Sainsbury's Money and NatWest Boxed), and side-core-driven product expansion inside incumbent banks (Mawarid and Fimple). Where BaaS is thriving, the regulatory and operational burden has been priced in from day one. Where it is struggling, that burden was underestimated two years ago and is now catching up.
The Open Banking Reset in One Line
PSD3 and the PSR will set the rules by 2027. FiDA will probably not catch up until the end of the decade. Core banking is where the practical API economy is being built right now, which is why vendor selection, migration programme management and side-core strategy are the questions on CIO desks this quarter. Open banking is no longer a product category. It is a layer in the stack. The vendors and banks that treat it that way are the ones moving.
