The Berlin Group

The Berlin Group consist of almost forty banks, associations and payment service providers (PSPs) from across the European Union. The objective was to define open and common scheme- and processor-independent standards in the inter-banking domain between creditor banks (acquirers) and debtor banks (issuer) and to complement the work carried out by organisations like the European Payments Council. The Berlin Group first met in Berlin, from which it derived its name, in October 2004.

To achieve this objective, the Berlin Group established a pure technical standardisation body, focusing on detailed technical and organisational requirements. This common API standard is called "NextGenPSD2" after the PSD2 directive and was developed to create uniform and interoperable communications between banks and third-party processors (TPPs).