Public market consultations

Public Market Consultations

Market consultations provide a structured way to collect feedback on Berlin Group specifications and implementation topics before finalisation or further development.

The Berlin Group has compelling reasons to embed a public, transparent market consultation within its standards development process:

1. Despite the already open character for participation, the Berlin Group aims for maximum market acceptance of its standards. Therefore, public and transparent market consultation is critical to developing mature standards.
   

2. The Berlin Group itself does not implement standards within or between schemes. Individual market participants decide whether and how to implement the standards delivered by the Berlin Group. Nevertheless, the experience of implementers who are not necessarily part of the Berlin Group standardisation work is important for identifying and managing interoperability or technical implementation issues at the earliest possible stage and for keeping the standards in line with the requirements of real implementations.
   
   A key objective of the Berlin Group is to meet market demands and integrate as much practical experience from implementers as possible into standards development. A public and transparent market consultation is deemed instrumental to this objective.

3. The Berlin Group has been created in the spirit of an ‘open source ’ initiative, with the intention of contributing its achievements freely to any interested party. The Berlin Group aims to establish harmonised technical standards for interbanking transactions between the Creditor Bank (Acquirer) and the Debtor Bank (Issuer). The standards specifications issued via the Berlin Group website are provided free for use in the public domain.
   
   The harmonised nature of the Berlin Group technical standards and their publication in the public domain make it even more important to include as many market participants as possible in standards development, and public, transparent market consultation is an excellent way to ensure maximum market involvement.

4. To foster competitive and efficient standards that benefit from the latest developments in payment technology, the Berlin Group welcomes innovative proposals that could improve the standards as much as possible.

5. Developed standards must always comply with applicable legislation and regulations. Market assessment and input are crucial to ensure maximum compliance with relevant legislation and regulatory requirements.

Received contributions will be considered and assessed by the Taskforce to which the topic belongs. Where applicable, the Taskforce may assess contributions on, e.g., concreteness and feasibility, and on whether they fit within the scope of Berlin Group objectives (e.g., pan-European interoperability), without affecting the substance of the standards, etc.

All interested market participants and stakeholders are encouraged to participate in Berlin Group public market consultations.