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Coverage · Belgium

Open Banking payment initiation in Belgium

MVP Payments has live, direct connections to Belgian banks. Bring your own PISP licence and initiate payments in Belgium through one API — with every connection monitored around the clock.

Status
Live
Currency
Euro (EUR)
Payment rail
SEPA Instant Credit Transfer
Interface standard
Berlin Group NextGenPSD2 and STET, by bank
Regulator
National Bank of Belgium (NBB)
Payment services law
Law of 11 March 2018 on payment institutions and payment services

How Open Banking payments work in Belgium

Belgium is a small market with an unusually mixed technical landscape. Some of its largest banks implement Berlin Group NextGenPSD2, others follow the French STET standard because of their group heritage, and several add their own conventions on top. A PISP building Belgian coverage itself ends up maintaining more than one integration style for a handful of banks.

Belgian consumers are heavy users of bank-led digital payments, with Bancontact the everyday default. That familiarity with approving a payment in a banking app carries over well to payment initiation, where the approval step happens in the same app the customer already trusts.

Payments settle as SEPA Instant Credit Transfers. Belgian banks were early adopters of instant payments, and the EU Instant Payments Regulation has since made sending and receiving them mandatory across the euro area.

What you bring

  • Authorisation as a payment institution with payment initiation permission — from the National Bank of Belgium, or from another EU or EEA regulator with a passport notification into Belgium
  • eIDAS certificates issued to your firm by a qualified trust service provider — a QWAC to identify you to each bank and a QSealC to sign requests, both carrying the payment initiation role
  • Your merchants, your contracts and your compliance framework — the payments run under your licence

What MVP Payments runs

The Belgian bank connections

Built and maintained bank by bank, direct to the bank's own interface or the hub it uses — and identified to each bank by your certificates, not ours.

Monitoring, around the clock

Health re-evaluated every five minutes, a dedicated AI agent per bank, and engineers who release the fix. How monitoring works.

The payment journey

One API, a hosted payment page in 20 languages and your merchants' branding, and signed webhooks at every final status. Explore the platform.

Payment initiation in Belgium: common questions

Can a PISP licensed in another EU country initiate payments in Belgium?
Yes. PSD2 lets a payment institution authorised in one EU or EEA member state provide payment initiation services in another through passporting: you notify your home regulator, which informs the National Bank of Belgium. You do not need a second licence in Belgium, and your eIDAS certificates are valid across the EU whichever member state issued them.
Which Open Banking API standards do Belgian banks use?
Both of the large continental standards appear in Belgium. Several banks implement Berlin Group NextGenPSD2, while banks with French group ownership follow STET. MVP Payments normalises both behind one API, so your integration does not change from bank to bank.
Do my customers need a separate app to pay?
No. The customer approves the payment with their own bank, using the banking app or web banking they already have. Nothing is installed, and their banking credentials are never shared with you.

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