Financial messaging platform Swift has published a blueprint for common API standards in collaboration with European banking standards bodies Stet and the Berlin Group.
The aim is to offer an open, harmonised and interoperable set of APIs as means to reduce complexity and guard against multiple competing standards for bank data sharing.
A white paper setting out the goals of the alliance concludes that a successful transition to an API-based financial ecosystem is only possible if financial standards bodies converge towards a shared business methodology.
To this end, Swift is working with Stet and the Berlin Group to provide a neutral collaboration platform, anchored by the use of ISO 20022 messaging standards, as a means to minimise inefficiencies caused by differing regulatory specifications that could limit opportunities for common API frameworks across different regions.
Hervé Robache, PSD2 API coordinator at Stet, says: “Having the building blocks that can accommodate all business needs and be reused by all API providers is critical to achieving this goal, which is why the development of this ISO20022 model is such an important and exciting development.”
The three partners have concluded a first phase where a common data model for the PSD2 Account Information Services has been created as a foundation for any future API definitions as a means to enable interoperability among PSD2 participants.
This work follows a successful collaboration on the creation of a common API framework between Swift and Australia’s New Payments Platform (NPP).