BIAN unveils free digital API Exchange
BIAN unveils free digital API Exchange
Banking Industry Architecture Network (BIAN), an independent non-profit standards association, has launched its API Exchange, an online digital library containing over 65 standardised API definitions.
Banks, software vendors and fintechs can access definitions from the API Exchange for free, once registered online.
“The definitions help to reduce the complexity of building and delivering open banking capabilities for banks, providing clear guidance on how to implement, innovative and intuitive digital services across both back-end and customer facing functions,” BIAN explains.
“This will allow banks to react to the limitations with modernising legacy technology and changing customer expectations more quickly, and with less cost.”
The organisation says that “archaic and convoluted banking IT architecture is a major barrier for banks, making it difficult to categorise disparate core IT systems into clear business functions”. So BIAN aims to help by “aligning with a framework that is standardised across the whole international banking industry”.
This will enable incumbents to collaborate with challenger banks, technology experts and fintechs with IT systems and APIs that are in-sync.
The API Exchange has been created by over 35 developers from across the BIAN member network of banks and technology vendors, namely:
- PNC Bank
- Citi Bank
- JP Morgan Chase
- IBM
- Virtusa
- Microsoft
- Sngular
- CGI
- EY
- Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)
- DXC
- Swift
- Accenture
- Wipro
The current API library will support banks with building modern processes around customer offers and on boarding, payments, loans, and mobile access, with additional API definitions to be added in the coming months.
All APIs have been created using BIAN established data models and in accordance with the ISO 20022 global standardisation approach.
The API Exchange is currently hosted on Microsoft’s Azure cloud.
Hans Tesselaar, executive director of BIAN, says the initiative is “the beginning of a new era in software development for the financial services industry”.
