Dutch bank ING is building a software development kit with open APIs in an effort to tap into the creativity of third party developers.
Speaking at Forrester's CIO Summit in Sydney, Saul van Beurden, chief information officer of the group's international retail banking arm, said the initiative was aimed at creating an agile development environment that could bring in fresh ideas from outside the bank for new retail banking applications.
He told the conference that the SDK would initially be released in France on a trial basis and rolled out worldwide if successful.
"The marketing people and IT people of our bank don't know everything," he said. "We are going to tap in on the creativity and needs of people."
ING is at the forefront of a movement that has swept the tech world and is beginning to win support in more adventurous banking quarters. AXA Banque and Credit Agricole are leading the way in France with the release of their own open APIs, while Australia's Commonwealth Bank has also committed to the creation of a software development portal for its recent move into the mobile POS business.
Australian tech site itnews says that ING's Van Beurden elaborated on other projects at the Forrester shindig, included allowing customers to access their bank statements from within Facebook through a widget, and a social media analytics tool that allowed bank staff to monitor posts about ING and its competitors to aggressively target new customers in Turkey.
ING builds app store for external devs - itnews