Account Information Service (AIS)
An account information service is a regulated open banking service that reads a customer's payment account data, with their consent, and presents it back to them. PSD2 defines it as an online service providing consolidated information on one or more payment accounts. It reads; it cannot move money.
Also called: account information service provider · AISP
Article 4(16) of PSD2 defines an account information service as “an online service to provide consolidated information on one or more payment accounts held by the payment service user with either another payment service provider or with more than one payment service provider”. A firm providing it is an AISP, and in the EEA it must be registered or authorised for the activity; it is a lighter regime than full payment institution authorisation, because the firm never touches funds, but it is not an unregulated activity.
The customer’s bank must give a registered AISP access to the same account data the customer could see themselves online, through a dedicated interface, once the customer has consented. That consent is not indefinite. Under the RTS on strong customer authentication, account access has to be re-authenticated periodically; the period was originally 90 days and was extended to 180 days by Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2022/2360, applying from 25 July 2023, along with a mandatory exemption from SCA for AISP access to balance and recent transactions.
What AIS is used for in practice is affordability and income verification for lending, accounting and cash-flow tools, account aggregation in personal finance apps, and onboarding checks that replace a PDF statement with data pulled from the source.
In practice
This is an EEA framework, and its details are not universal. The UK's rules descend from the same directive but are now maintained separately by the FCA and have diverged; the US has no directly equivalent licensing regime and reached open banking through a different route. Do not state a PSD2 access or consent rule as though it applied everywhere, or as though it were frozen — PSD3 and the Payment Services Regulation had been agreed in trilogue and were close to formal adoption as at September 2026.
Example
A lender asks an applicant to connect their current account so it can see twelve months of income. The AISP retrieves the data with consent and passes it to the lender. No payment is made, no balance moves, and the AISP never has access to the applicant's money.
Commonly confused with
| Term | How it differs |
|---|---|
| Payment Initiation Service | A PISP instructs a payment from the customer's account. An AISP only reads data. Many firms are authorised for both, which is why the two get conflated. |
| Open Banking | Open banking is the broader policy and infrastructure. AIS is one of the two regulated services that sit inside it. |
| Screen scraping | Retrieving data by logging in as the customer with their credentials. PSD2 pushed the market to dedicated interfaces precisely to replace it. |
See also
- Payment Initiation ServiceA payment initiation service instructs a payment from a customer's own bank account on their instruction. PSD2 requires that the provider must not hold the payer's funds at any time in connection with the service — which is the whole distinction between a PISP and a firm that handles money.
- Open BankingOpen banking is regulated access to bank account data and to payment initiation through APIs, with the account holder’s consent. In the European Union and the United Kingdom it is a licensed activity under payment services law, not a private arrangement between a fintech and a bank.
- PSD2PSD2, the Second Payment Services Directive, is the EU law governing payment services. It sets the authorization categories for payment firms, opened bank account access to licensed third parties, and required strong customer authentication for electronic payments.
- Strong Customer AuthenticationStrong customer authentication is the PSD2 requirement to verify a payer using two independent factors drawn from knowledge, possession and inherence. It applies to electronic payments and account access in the EEA, subject to a defined set of exemptions — and the exemptions are where the work is.
- Payment InstitutionA payment institution is a firm authorized in the United Kingdom or a European Union member state to provide payment services — transfers, acquiring, remittance, payment initiation — but not to issue electronic money. It may hold customer funds in payment accounts used only for payment transactions; those funds are neither deposits nor e-money.
- Payment Service ProviderA payment service provider, or PSP, is a firm that moves payments for merchants or consumers. In UK and EU payment services law it is also a defined umbrella term covering several kinds of regulated provider, and Canada defines it separately again under the Retail Payment Activities Act.
Go deeper
Regulatory information checked: 23/Sep/2026