Open Banking - Boosting the API Impact

Banking Frontiers brought together BFSI experts for a panel discussion on how APIs are driving open banking and how to manage them effectively. Edited excerpts:

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Shiv Kumar Bhasin, COO & CTO, National Stock Exchange

Open banking started first in Europe, and they set up the standards for the personal banking area. In the stock exchange scenario, we have a lot of data which gets disseminated using the TCP IP. Currently it uses the multicast methodology, and people listen to the systems. All these price feeds are currently coming with a proprietary protocol based on multicast, and there are API based approach being set up where we are hosting these APIs is on the cloud. People can use it as a channel for browsing, ie, get the one particular set of stock symbols now, the prices, etc. So with API integration, a snapshot of price feeds are made available for the customer.

There are interdependencies between multiple departments of a bank and its IT department, which makes the end-to-end customer journey work. While API is not the best way to resolve all those dependencies, it is the best contract than having tight integration.

Furthermore, on the connected experience, one needs to know whether it is device neutral or channel neutral. To make it device or channel neutral, it cannot be supported unless there is a platform approach. Platform approach means that the experience API and the transactional APIs are exposed. Suppose I am applying for a loan, and I have uploaded my details, finalized on the amount of loan, chosen the EMI etc, but got distracted and left. After sometime, if I use a different device to log in again, I should be to pick up from where I left that process. This requires various kinds of APIs, sometimes fintech collaboration-based APIs. Ultimately, API is the engine behind all this.