Deutsche Bank has opened a developer portal to enable third party coders to run the bank's APIs and create new financial applications.
The giant German bank's dbAPI interafce gives third parties access to its proprietary developer environment to test their ideas and innovations using anonymised banking data.
Deutsche Bank COO Kim Hammonds bills the programme as a significant milestone in the bank's digital journey.
"It offers a huge advantage for creative developers and programmers: they can put their business ideas and apps to the test even while they are still developing them," he says. "This is all possible thanks to the test data, which reflects the profiles and needs of many millions of Bank customers. This collaborative approach will both help external parties and Deutsche Bank to reduce time-to-market for new products and services to the benefit of our clients.“
The bank gave developers the opportunity to test-drive its API at a three-day hackathon in Berlin last week that involved 750 applicants and 70 participants from 22 countries.
First prize was awarded to a financial contract closing app 'Finance Guru', second prize to community budgeting and savings platform 'Flattr' and third prize to 'FinChild', a money management training programme for children.
The winning teams received prize money totalling EUR 50,000 and the choice of exploring a collaboration with Deutsche Bank's recently-opened Digital Factory or presenting their ideas to the Axel Springer Plug&Play start-up accelerator.