Securely participate – and thrive – on the open banking marketplace

The CFPB’s announcement of its final U.S. open banking rule (alongside similar rules in Canada) is certainly an important factor in banks’ adoption of API technologies. However, in North America, a market-driven open finance ecosystem has already begun to blossom – and those who lag behind risk missing a chance to future-proof their enterprise while discovering new business models.

We’ve written much about the important regulatory compliance aspects of the Dodd-Frank Act’s section 1033. Today, let’s talk about how Axway’s solution for open banking, open finance, and beyond turns the cost of compliance into opportunity. After all, this is how financial institutions will truly thrive in the upcoming open banking marketplace.

Your bank’s digital transformation is already underway

It really isn’t just about compliance anymore. After all, the escalating demand for innovative services and seamless digital experiences has pushed banks and credit unions to evolve rapidly. North America has very much adopted a market-driven approach to APIs in financial services.

The next evolution will further integrate financial services into a broader digital ecosystem, where Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) redefines how banking products and services are consumed, and platform banking trends diversify what’s possible for banking apps.

Open banking transforms the financial landscape by shifting from siloed platforms to a more integrated ecosystem, enabling banks to innovate and explore new business models. This is how you turn the costs of compliance into opportunities:

APIs are drivers of innovation: open banking APIs allow banks to leverage data aggregation for actionable insights and extend their services through partnerships, supporting the trend of embedded finance. By embracing open banking APIs, FIs can improve customer satisfaction and build trust.

Uncover new revenue streams through productization of data access APIs: certainly, most regulatory APIs will have to be provided free of charge. But once you build a delightful developer experience that makes your APIs easier to find and adopt, you can also build true, premium API products that can be monetized.

Axway’s solution for open banking, open finance, and collaboration makes the experience of compliance, integration and connectivity easy. With it, FIs can engage in effective and secure collaboration thanks to:

• An intuitive developer experience
• Pre-built open banking APIs (i.e., FDX-compliant for North America)
• Security, identity, and consent dashboards
• Open banking connectors
• An easy integration experience

All of this, powered by Axway’s industry leading Amplify Platform.

Simplify your API ecosystem through automation

We can’t ignore the fact that keeping pace with rapid and continuous regulatory changes poses a significant challenge. This is why it can be so valuable to invest in a solution – better yet, a trusted partner – to help you maintain consumer trust and regulatory compliance.

Amplify Open Banking helps streamline the complexities of open banking regulations for financial institutions, ensuring compliance, managing consents meticulously, and supporting fintech collaborations.

It supports interoperability by leveraging open standards like the FDX v6.x API, which has established itself as North America’s de facto open banking standard. This means banks, fintechs, and aggregators can securely share data without having to rely on proprietary systems.

Flexible yet robust consent mechanisms enhance consumer trust

Technologically speaking, consent in open banking is a rather complex problem to solve. Ensuring permissions at every level – which can be revoked at any time – requires many back-end integration flows.

It’s why Amplify Open Banking institutes a sophisticated consent management system, which is crucial to maintaining consumer trust and regulatory compliance. Consent dashboarding and APIs offer better transparency and end-user control over the data being shared.

By reducing the back-end complexity of consent management, the platform enables banks to rapidly scale fintech partnerships and participate in BaaS, Platform Banking, and more. It fosters collaboration across the financial ecosystem and ensuring a competitive edge in a fast-evolving market.

Secure APIs so you can trust your tech

A common fear inherent in the term “open banking” is that there is significant risk involved when opening up sensitive financial data. But in fact, open banking provides a much more secure alternative to the widely used mechanism called “screen scraping,” which FIs have used in the past to enable these types of digital services.

Nevertheless, APIs are a significant attack vector: Axway’s 2024 State of Enterprise API Maturity report found that 78% of enterprise decision-makers don’t even know how many APIs they have. 87% agree that blind spots such as ‘Zombie’ and ‘Shadow’ APIs are key security threats.

This is why it’s critical for financial institutions to implement robust measures that will protect sensitive customer and member data from breaches or cyber-attacks.

In addition to robust governance over all your APIs, this requires providing more secure access to customer data with granular consents, and adopting advanced, financial-grade API security, privacy, and data sharing standards (FAPI 2.0, Oauth, OIDC, SAML, etc.).

Amplify Open Banking addresses these complexities by providing a comprehensive, low-code/no-code platform that ensures compliance with regulations, integrates seamlessly with existing systems, and enhances security protocols while reducing costs.

Unleash innovation and unlock new business models with Axway

Beyond ensuring compliance with laws like Dodd-Frank 1033, Axway’s solution supports collaborations with fintech, reducing overheads and accelerating innovation.

Axway provides more than just technology. We have been a trusted middleware and core banking provider for over 50 years, cumulating rich experience with Open Banking in the E.U. and Brazil over the past decade.

By embracing open banking and open finance technologies, FIs can:

• Attract collaboration and open doors to new markets and revenue models
• Accelerate ecosystem engagement and regulatory compliance
• Implement an open banking strategy with a cohesive package of consent management, compliant reporting, and third-party provider (TPP) certification
• Leverage an API platform that will allow them to scale and expand for the long term.

See also open banking use cases: a goldmine of actionable intelligence for banks willing to open up

Amplify Open Banking helps you achieve ROI on your API program faster while reducing security risks.

And at the end of the day, financial institutions will stay in front of the competition by reaching new customers through an expanding ecosystem of TPPs and fintechs.