A PISP (Payment Initiation Service Provider) is a regulated entity that can initiate payments from a customer’s bank account to a merchant or another account via open banking APIs, with the customer’s consent. Unlike card payments, the money moves directly between bank accounts (e.g. SEPA, Faster Payments, or ACH).

PISPs are licensed under PSD2 in the EU and under the UK Open Banking Standard. They do not handle the funds; they instruct the bank to debit the payer’s account and credit the beneficiary. This supports use cases such as instant checkout, bill pay, and account-to-account transfers with lower fees than cards.

Many open banking API aggregators offer both AIS and PIS (payment initiation) so that a single integration can read accounts and initiate payments. The Open Banking Tracker directory lists aggregators by AIS/PIS support and country coverage.