API Integration in the Banking Ecosystem: the Role of Open Banking

Abstract

To provide banking services to clients at any location in the world has become a necessity as the economy operates on a global scale. This has brought about the innovations of both Fintech companies and digital ecosystems. They offer additional competition and remote services to consumers banking on other institutions. Having little infrastructure at a global scale results in a lack of trust with the consumers, and an inexperience when it comes to the financial industry, confines these organizations to a lack of customer bases. Open banking systems will permit the clients to handle their assets from a single dashboard. It will replace the multitude of applications used from different banking institutions by providing a single comprehensive unified application that will integrate different financial products such as accounts, loans, credit and debit cards, insurance and investments. Open banking systems as a model is integrated with a host of other networking facilities, and associated with the need for advanced data protection systems. It is vital for the clients these days to keep in mind that they are not simply surrendering their data to any and every organization. Data is only accessible to any of third parties after the clients have expressly given consent for their data to be processed. The open banking model using application programming interfaces is the first step in a sequence of innovations to banking processes. JEL: G21, O33, G28