Latest / The Payments Shed / Ep. 46 - Live from MPE Berlin: Dimoco on Open Banking at Checkout: UX, Trust & the Next Wave of A2A Payments

Transcript

Ep. 46 - Live from MPE Berlin: Dimoco on Open Banking at Checkout: UX, Trust & the Next Wave of A2A Payments · The Payments Shed

• 0:04
  Welcome to another episode of The Payment Shed Live from MP
• 0:07
  2026. I am joined by Dugu Ananch, Head
• 0:11
  of Products at Democo. Please introduce yourself, Tell
• 0:14
  us a little bit about Democo and your role within the business.
• 0:17
  Thank you for having me. So yes, I'm Head of Product and
• 0:21
  Provider Center at the Moscow. So I'm basically responsible
• 0:25
  from our sourcing part of the payments ecosystem and how do we
• 0:29
  go to market with our product. Democo is the full slash payment
• 0:33
  provider. We are providing to digital only
• 0:36
  businesses to our online merchants and a coverage of a
• 0:41
  lot of payment methods and open making is also one of them.
• 0:45
  Great and full European market coverage.
• 0:47
  Exactly. We are a European licensed
• 0:50
  payment institution and so full European coverage, it's our core
• 0:54
  markets and also local and top region German speaking countries
• 0:59
  is also one of our focus. Brilliant.
• 1:01
  Lots of markets you guys are in there.
• 1:03
  Why DeMarco got an open banking license in the first place?
• 1:06
  Yes, we are in actually one of the early movers in Syria.
• 1:10
  We got one of the very first of making licenses, you know is a
• 1:15
  midsize training service provider and we are supporting
• 1:18
  our merchant base with very variety of payment options.
• 1:23
  But in our side, it's not always possible to have everything, you
• 1:27
  know, end to end or cover everything.
• 1:29
  So we are more focused on customized solutions based on
• 1:33
  our merchant and having our own license always gives us the
• 1:37
  flexibility as well as time to market and we are faster and we
• 1:41
  are flexible for our merchant. And PSD 3 is obviously into the
• 1:47
  kind of weeds now, how much of an impact does have, how does
• 1:50
  that have on you guys and also open banking?
• 1:54
  Yes, we are very much looking into it with hopeful, you know,
• 1:58
  eyes because yes, we're testing on PS2 open making
• 2:02
  infrastructure and like everybody else, we have our pain
• 2:05
  points of standardization in points of reporting and
• 2:09
  everything. So we are more looking forward
• 2:13
  to more standardized solutions across the ecosystem.
• 2:17
  And I think it would also be very important to look into more
• 2:22
  embedded finance, more like an enabler and we will not be only
• 2:26
  talking about thinking infrastructure anymore, but they
• 2:29
  will think on the finance and then with the finance.
• 2:33
  Well, if we haven't learned our mistakes from PSD 2 over the
• 2:35
  years, then we, we probably made a mistake along the way
• 2:38
  preparing for PSD 3, right? I mean, it, it took a while for
• 2:41
  PSD 2 to happen and it might be the same for PSD 3 in terms of
• 2:45
  like, it'll be a journey, right? It'll have, it'll have different
• 2:49
  steps that we all have to go through.
• 2:51
  And when you look at A to a payments, you know, and there's
• 2:54
  always the comparison of, oh, there's cards and it's account
• 2:57
  to account and they're, you know, they're competing with
• 2:59
  each other. And I think we're kind of
• 3:00
  getting to this point where people realize the two can work
• 3:02
  happily in harmony with each other.
• 3:04
  But when you look at an A to a transaction specifically, what
• 3:07
  makes it so seamless? Why is it such a nice payment
• 3:09
  method for a customer to use first?
• 3:11
  Of all the bank is there the traditional payment mentals,
• 3:15
  everybody's accustomed to, everybody's familiar.
• 3:19
  And in the best case scenario, in the best case flow, we have
• 3:22
  an F to F user journey where everybody is feeling more
• 3:26
  comfortable with actually open banking.
• 3:29
  Pay by bank is now leveraging very much this big trust factor
• 3:33
  of the of the commodity and the traditional banking ecosystem.
• 3:38
  So it's a, it's an enabler still, I believe in that.
• 3:41
  But of course, there is still more room to get there.
• 3:45
  And the other part of it I would say is payments real time, seven
• 3:49
  days a week, right? We talk about that enough, you
• 3:51
  know, with card payments on weekends.
• 3:53
  So you've got the benefit of getting paid in the moment
• 3:57
  247365. And now card systems are taking
• 4:01
  it as an example to that. But the weekend still has that
• 4:04
  lagging indicator right as well. So and when you think about open
• 4:08
  banking and you know the present state versus the future, where
• 4:14
  are we going next? Much more smoother context you
• 4:18
  will go because the currently the fragmentation is is really
• 4:23
  killing all the payment service providers.
• 4:25
  There is not a new concept of open banking orchestration
• 4:29
  because there is a mood actually to have a middle layer to
• 4:33
  compensate all of those problems.
• 4:36
  But I see it's also with regulatory developments which
• 4:40
  are supporting and complementing PSP 3 like PIDO.
• 4:45
  So we are going into into more intuitive mechanisms right now.
• 4:50
  And I, I can see already upcoming second wave of open
• 4:55
  banking. What happened to wallets?
• 4:57
  Actually we are in the second wave of wallets which is much
• 5:00
  more convenient to work with now.
• 5:02
  I think there are really a second and a better round for
• 5:04
  open banking too. And what about point of sale?
• 5:06
  Do you think open banking has to pay by bank has to find its way
• 5:09
  into the point and sale environment in the long term?
• 5:12
  In the point of sale, yes, but there is still a bit of of
• 5:18
  discussion there going on because how then it will
• 5:21
  overcome also they did the convenient experiencing existing
• 5:25
  fact, but it's been it's been get together with the rule of
• 5:29
  acceptance because we also see a lot of all of acceptance growth
• 5:32
  on the on the point of sale and then enabling all of these
• 5:37
  different methods we are done talking about with them.
• 5:39
  They were available through this interface.
• 5:42
  It's interesting because you know, we look at, you know,
• 5:43
  Kevin, unfortunately it didn't work out for them as a business,
• 5:46
  but they would have that real focus on pushing the point of
• 5:48
  sale product. And it just felt like it was a
• 5:50
  little bit too early in the open banking journey maybe for that
• 5:54
  pure, pure player as far as point of sale open banking was
• 5:58
  concerned. But I think when when we look at
• 6:00
  the the movement into the wallet for pay by bank, that feels like
• 6:05
  the right time where point of sale adoption then we'll we'll
• 6:07
  kind of. Becomes digital, so there will
• 6:10
  only be digital payments left in the end.
• 6:13
  You know, do you think there is going to be a a kind of gradual
• 6:17
  market share grab as far as card payment traffic is concerned?
• 6:21
  We're going to see A to a starting to eat into those
• 6:23
  volumes annually. That's.
• 6:24
  My favorite question because I I see the payment ecosystems,
• 6:29
  especially in digital payments, like a pie.
• 6:32
  Yeah, you know, the new enablers and the new players actually
• 6:37
  just make the pie bigger because they enable more people.
• 6:40
  So I like to think from that perspective actually, because
• 6:43
  you can never eat a pie with one slice, right?
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  You need to slice it down. So every user will have
• 6:50
  convenient pick of their own choice and I really think that
• 6:54
  open banking is more of an enable around making that's
• 6:58
  better. And we saw in Brazil with pics
• 7:00
  how it brought more people into the financial ecosystem.
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  Do you think that's gonna happen in Europe?
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  Are there still sort of unbanked communities in the European
• 7:07
  market where you think open banking can bring them more into
• 7:10
  the financial ecosystem as well, like we've seen with pics?
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  They have to eventually. I went on the bank side when we
• 7:16
  see two deadline was approaching and it was a little bit of a bit
• 7:20
  of a hurdle how we implemented this.
• 7:22
  And now I can see when I stand in my role in the that's how we
• 7:27
  are actually not rightfully using it, but it needs to be
• 7:32
  there for the whole ecosystem to work.
• 7:35
  And Europe is also, I think, a reckoning to enable more
• 7:39
  technology, more innovation, and then start taking all the time
• 7:44
  in the world to discuss things, but just get in action.
• 7:47
  Your point about fragmentation was really interesting because I
• 7:49
  do feel like something we've heard in the podcast that, you
• 7:52
  know, since we've been doing as well was, you know, not everyone
• 7:54
  was having working from the same API or central API.
• 7:57
  And there's been, you know, one version in the the UAE that's
• 8:00
  being built one in Europe, one in the UK.
• 8:02
  And you almost want the same open banking framework globally,
• 8:05
  right? If it A to a is going to become,
• 8:07
  you know, a cross-border payment method, not just with things
• 8:10
  like Weiro in the European market, but actually a payment
• 8:13
  method where if I'm coming over from Brazil and PICS, I want to
• 8:15
  be able to pay by pics and use it in any country in the world,
• 8:18
  right? Exactly.
• 8:19
  But this is also an unfortunate for the world of providers, you
• 8:23
  know to go out there for interoperability options.
• 8:27
  We are discussing today now also a big discussion in Europe.
• 8:31
  You know, we have a European solution or not, if it is
• 8:35
  successful or not, but basically all these solutions need to work
• 8:40
  together to enable more innovation and more convenience
• 8:44
  for the for the users and otherwise they are so late.
• 8:47
  Interoperability is Justin's favorite word.
• 8:50
  He's over there behind the camera, but he loves to say that
• 8:52
  word. It's it's his favorite word in
• 8:53
  the word. So we like to ask everyone about
• 8:56
  merchant payment ecosystem, right?
• 8:58
  We're at MPE in Berlin. Why for Democa is this such an
• 9:01
  important event for you guys to come to we?
• 9:03
  Are here for several years now and I find it very useful and
• 9:07
  very intense to have all the discussions in our ecosystem
• 9:12
  also with our partners and providers.
• 9:15
  It's a big enabler for us, These three intense table grounds,
• 9:20
  actually very efficient for us. I think it is also, it's not
• 9:24
  huge, but it has such a good content.
• 9:28
  Also, when you go to a session around the corner, every corner
• 9:32
  I'm seeing someone that I know I've worked with.
• 9:35
  So it is like a cultivation hub. Everyone in the payments sort of
• 9:40
  knows each other. But what I thought Finland is
• 9:42
  really good about it is the merchant volumes that are here.
• 9:45
  You know, you've got to speak to the vendor side, the payments
• 9:47
  provider side, but you've also got some really interesting
• 9:49
  merchants in the room. And again with A to a getting
• 9:52
  their opinion I think on open banking and how they see that
• 9:54
  maybe fitting into their stat moving forward is something.
• 9:57
  Pretty interesting also to collect those insights from the,
• 10:00
  the merchants with all the discussions with the now the AI
• 10:05
  talks, open banking talks and every other solution.
• 10:09
  It's also a good way to exchange with them.
• 10:12
  You come here with different things, you know, I'm more on
• 10:14
  the sorting part, but also our head of sales is also here to to
• 10:19
  get through this run. So what is good then for MPs
• 10:23
  actually provides us the the whole whole picture.
• 10:27
  You can see what runs. So you mentioned AI.
• 10:28
  So we, you know, everyone always likes to talk about AI, but as
• 10:32
  you said, I wasn't going to ask, but as you said it, AI and open
• 10:35
  banking, is there some sort of happy harmony?
• 10:37
  Is AI going to help us again with maybe acceleration of open
• 10:40
  banking adoption? I hope so.
• 10:43
  I really hope so. But I don't think that's
• 10:45
  equipment and it's not, it will not be one of the first things
• 10:49
  that we will make use of AI think because in the heavily
• 10:53
  regulated banking environment, we know what it means, you know,
• 10:56
  to get another perspective. So I appreciate that.
• 11:00
  Less of that. So the last question, every
• 11:02
  guest that comes onto our podcast, we have a segment
• 11:05
  called the Shelf of Shame where you nominate something in
• 11:07
  payments or fintech, but if you could banish forever never to
• 11:10
  see again. So what are you bringing today
• 11:13
  for for our nomination from Jamaica?
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  So never to see it again, I would say this, I want to see a
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  little bit of more transformation from regulatory
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  push towards a more cultivating commercial model.
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  Because once we are reinforcing the banks to regulate it, to be
• 11:37
  obliged to do something, what we have at hands, how usable it is
• 11:43
  and how much we are suffering. Then afterwards I really want to
• 11:46
  transform it in a more win win models that we need to think to
• 11:50
  create about also working on the regulation because we are always
• 11:54
  missing this part and then it takes years to clean that up,
• 11:58
  OK. So lack of collaboration between
• 12:00
  the regulator and and delivery to the market, I like that.
• 12:02
  Yeah, I'm happy to happy to put that on the shelf.
• 12:04
  For shame. Well, thank you very much for
• 12:05
  joining us today and enjoy the rest of MPE 2026.
• 12:10
  Two BHK flats for rent in Kanpur.