In the past decade, many banks have created a developer portal to publish their open APIs. Developers can visit the portal, sign up, and use the bank’s APIs to drive their business initiatives.
Is this open banking in action?
While many banks would say yes, I beg to differ: there’s a lot more to providing a successful open banking platform than just APIs.
Open banking is more than external API connections. Open banking APIs are backed by consistency across the bank’s API ecosystem. This standardization acts as an accelerator for successful open banking deployment.
In light of this, open banking compels businesses to treat APIs as products. Amplify Enterprise Marketplace does just that.
The need to treat open banking APIs as products
When banks open their APIs to an external audience, developers are customers. Ultimately, they’re kingmakers who decide which APIs to use, which to discard, and who they’ll do business with at the end of the day.
Thinking about open banking APIs in this context lends itself to the value of an API product mindset.
If you’re serious about your APIs being products and trying to market and sell them like products, you need to keep developers (your customers) top of mind.
While a developer portal supports a developer’s need for technical access and collaboration, an API marketplace layers a business-service-level view over the top of these elements.
Developers can easily find open banking APIs relevant to their needs and get all the information and documentation they need for consumption. This information and documentation might include product overviews, use cases, and demo applications that walk you through the consent and setup process.
Developers can also get all the credentials they need to start testing endpoints. These test harnesses let them get more familiar with APIs, with the option to start using APIs in Postman for comfort.
When banks cater to developers in the same way they cater to their retail customers, the result is a compelling user experience that accelerates open banking API adoption.
The Amplify Platform solution for open banking
Amplify Enterprise Marketplace — based on our proven universal API management solution and infrastructure — is opening up new opportunities for banks to accelerate their open API growth.
Banks can quickly and easily publish open banking APIs in a healthy ecosystem and enable value-driven solutions.
Three key feature sets of Amplify Marketplace help drive these results:
- An intuitive developer experience that supports productivity
- Access to pre-built open banking APIs based on dominant standards
- Security, identity, and consent aligned with your infrastructure
Amplify Marketplace presents APIs in a clear and very easy-to-understand way. When a developer clicks through to an API, they’ll see a business page that explains in simple language what the API does, along with support in the form of documentation and outreach links. The business page can be white-labeled to make it part of the bank’s user experience, from the layout to the content.
You can use this framework to make the experience entirely your own.
With subscription mechanisms attached to APIs and credentials built into the products, developers can easily get up and running when they’re ready to move forward. It’s complete self-service for a developer from start to finish.
See also: APIs in financial services: keys to successful adoption
Providing the tools and the expertise
At Axway, we offer more than just an open banking solution: we bring 20 years of experience with API management and integrations so you achieve the open banking edge.
Axway helps banks wrap their arms around the complexities of open banking. As consumers ask for new things that add complexities to internal systems, banks have a foundation in place to continue serving their open banking needs.
And, as we can already see, gaining a foothold in the open banking arena lends itself to more opportunities. The idea of open finance is even evolving into open data.
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