How to tap into the full power of open banking APIs

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, open banking is more than external API connections. Open banking APIs are backed by consistency across the bank’s API ecosystem.

Eyal Sivan, Axway Head of Open Banking, spoke about this critical piece of the open banking API puzzle in a recent webinar.

“Open banking introduces a very important notion, and that notion is standardization,” Sivan said. “It’s the idea that whether you’re talking to a big bank, a small bank, a fintech, or a credit union, it all works the same way.”

In light of this, open banking compels businesses to treat APIs as products — and Amplify Open Banking 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 you’re trying to market and sell them like products, another question arises: who are your customers?

The answer is developers.

“Developers are ultimately the kingmakers,” says Sivan, “they’re the ones who are going to decide which platforms get used, which ones get discarded and which bank they want to do business with.

So, whether you’re talking about a developer at a business client or a developer at an aggregator or a developer in a garage, catering to them in the way that you would cater to real customers is a part of open banking success. This is very much at the heart of how we’ve developed our product design with Amplify Open Banking.”

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, access API subscription information and documentation, and get the credentials they need to start testing endpoints.

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 Open Banking solution

As the name suggests, Amplify Open Banking 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 Open Banking 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 Open Banking 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.

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.

The APIs themselves are backed by common open standards such as Financial Data Exchange (FDX) or Brazil Open Banking. Without writing any code, the open banking APIs are fully compliant, documented, and ready for implementation. As APIs change, updates are published and added to the API marketplace.

Providing the tools and the expertise

Finally, “what makes us special is we don’t just give you the open banking solution,” Sivan states. “We give you 20 years of experience doing API management and internal integration so you can bind it to that 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.

“What open banking has unleashed is a massive trend,” Sivan concludes. “Already, you’re starting to see open banking APIs expand to deal with more products than just retail banking.”