The potential benefits of PSD2 might be frustrated if banks and payment service providers would communicate by a wide diversity of technical interfaces. Common standards help to create a critical mass and to incite new players to enter the market. Standardization is not provided for by PSD2 or its lower regulations. For good reasons, as regulations should be technologically neutral and principle-based.
The resources mobilized by the cheque clearing process total some 300 persons putting in some 325 person-hours on a daily basis, including the transport of cheques from the respective banks to the PLACH, and back. This process has been going on for the last 44 years.