Articles

5 Benefits of Open Banking APIs

Open banking APIs (application programming interfaces) offer a wide range of benefits for a modern financial institution, from increasing revenue to reducing fraud risk.

Open banking is finding its way into Canada with the government working hard to set regulations by the tentative launch date of January 2024.

In the meantime, financial institutions like yours should start preparing. When open banking is introduced to the public, you should be in a position to roll out products and services faster than competitors and with minimal friction.

Below, we explain the meaning of APIs, the state of open banking in Canada, and how exactly open banking APIs can help your business.

What is Open Banking?

Open banking refers to using APIs to access financial data by third parties in a secure manner.

Customers expect faster, one-stop banking services. So far, customers have relied on third-party services that use screen scraping for non-core banking services like budgeting and financial decision-making.

Screen scraping leaves your customers vulnerable to multiple types of online threats. In a world rampant with cybercrime, your customers want a safer alternative, and that’s where open banking offers value.

With open banking, you can securely allow third parties to access your financial data. For example, suppose a fintech app offers AI-based investment advice.

To offer advice, it needs to look at your current portfolio. You can use open banking to allow the app to access your financial data securely without having to use screen scraping.

This model offers all parties a benefit — you can use the app faster, the fintech can operate with the bank’s license, and the bank can charge a fee for the customer data.

Open Banking in Canada

Open banking is currently unavailable in Canada. The government is developing a roadmap to introduce open banking in Canada safely.

According to the Final Report from the Advisory Committee on Open Banking, the government has established four groups to provide input on the four fundamental aspects of the open banking framework—accreditation, liability, privacy, and security.

The original target date to introduce open banking was January 2023. However, the committee is yet to reach a consensus on multiple aspects.

The Canadian government may take a while to implement open banking. But we’ll likely see key developments in the implementation process over the next few months.

The government has appointed Abraham Tachjian to develop the open banking framework for Canada.

Benefits of Open Banking APIs

While you wait for open banking regulations to become available in Canada, it’s best to prepare your API ecosystem, so you’re ready for open banking when it’s introduced.

Once you have a mature open banking API ecosystem that’s operational, you’ll benefit in the following ways:

Increased Revenue

As a financial institution, you can use open banking APIs to increase revenue in one or more of the following ways:

Partnering with Fintechs offering innovative solutions: You can partner with Fintechs to offer innovative solutions without creating, managing, or innovating products and services in-house. The partnership allows you to offer services your customers expect and improve their end-to-end journey. Of course, these services also create new revenue streams for you.
Selling to Fintechs: As a bank, you can add another revenue source by providing banking-as-a-service (BaaS), where third parties can connect to your database using APIs for a fee. Third parties can use this data to provide value-add services in addition to what regulators mandate.
Optimize your marketing campaigns based on user data: Open banking, combined with data aggregation, provides deeper insights into customers’ behavior and choices. These insights enable you to position your products better and run personalized marketing campaigns, which can increase your overall revenue.

Banking as a Service (BaaS)

Open banking APIs and Banking-as-a-Service are often used interchangeably.

However, they’re fundamentally different. BaaS is a business model where banks integrate their services into a third-party’s product or service.

Fintechs and non-financial companies (NFCs) use BaaS to offer customers better digital banking services, like one-minute loan approvals, without getting their own banking license. This is made possible through open banking APIs.

BaaS is quickly gaining popularity as customer dissatisfaction with banks’ existing services grow. According to Delloite, 2x ROAA (return on average assets) for banks focused on BaaS offerings.

A few ways you can monetize by proving BaaS include:

Providing your banking license, technology, and products to other banks, non-financial companies (NFCs), and aggregators.

You can partner with a distributor with excellent end-user relationships to offer innovative financial solutions.
You can partner with an aggregator who acts as a provider-aggregator to provide an out-of-the-box solution by coupling the capabilities of multiple vendors.

Payment as a Service (PaaS)

Open banking APIs allow you to build faster, more secure bank rails. Once you implement open banking, you can enable users to make direct payments seamlessly without entering card details.

As a bank, you can use open banking APIs to increase payments’ transparency and scalability by leveraging individual transactions and bi-directional processing.

With open banking APIs, you can upscale your current payment methods like ACH (Automatic Clearing House Network) and wire transfers. APIs will also enable you to offer modern payment methods like Real-Time Payments (RTPs) and Pay-By-Bank when they become available in Canada.

Open banking also facilitates payment initiation service (PIS). When a merchant partners with a licensed third party, the third party can initiate a payment on behalf of a customer’s bank account using PIS.

PIS doesn’t require the customer or merchant to share any sensitive information. The customer simply approves a payment via the banking app with a secret pin or biometric authentication.

Just like any account-to-account transfer, the money is transferred directly to the merchant’s account within seconds.

Improved Customer Engagement

Open banking APIs improve customer engagement by streamlining the onboarding process and offering a one-stop solution for multiple needs.

For example, open banking APIs can allow biometric logins and authentication to minimize the time it takes your customer to access the account. Your users will be able to complete tasks faster without compromising data security.

With Canadians worried more than ever about the cost of living crisis in Canada, they’re carefully observing their money.

Typically, they’d need to source information from individual sources to get a full picture of their financial status in order to make sound financial decisions.

Open banking APIs can simplify the process by allowing third-party apps to automatically aggregate this information into a single app, improving customer engagement.

Reduced Risk of Fraud

Open banking APIs provide access to customer data, allowing more accurate risk profiling. Access to customer data allows incorporating verified identity information, account balances, and transaction patterns into your risk models.

The UK, where open banking has been available since 2018, has reduced card fraud significantly. In 2021, the UK reduced the losses from card fraud by an impressive £49.2 million.

The following four things make open banking payments safer:

Each payment uses strong customer authentication (SCA), which was introduced as a requirement in Europe by the revised Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2) for ecommerce transactions in 2019.

No sensitive information is required for any open banking use case.
APIs pre-populate payment information.
Open banking providers take care of onboarding the merchants as well as carrying out the necessary due diligence.

Implementing Open Banking APIs with Blanc Labs

Familiarizing yourself with open banking APIs is critical to ensure you’re equipped with the right knowledge and tools when open banking becomes available in Canada.

The problem? It can feel daunting. Partnering with the right team can make the process a whole lot easier.

Blanc Labs, in partnership with Axway and Mulesoft, can help you build a robust open banking API ecosystem. We can answer any questions you have and take care of the end-to-end implementation process.

Book a discovery call with Blanc Labs to learn more about open banking APIs.

Articles

What is API Management?

Application Programming Interface (API) management has become an increasingly important aspect of modern business operations. With the advent of cloud computing and the need for digital transformation, enterprises are using APIs to enhance their existing applications, develop new applications, and drive innovation.

According to a study by Forbes, firms that used APIs saw 12.7% growth in their market capitalization over a period of four years. But using APIs is one thing and having an API strategy in place that can enable your business goals is another.

Proper management of APIs is imperative to support smooth business functioning. From startups to large enterprises, API management has become a critical component for businesses to remain competitive and meet the changing needs of their customers.

Whether you are a financial services provider looking to securely integrate third-party services, a retail giant seeking to improve your e-commerce platform, or a healthcare organization seeking to securely exchange medical data, API management can help you achieve your business objectives.

API Management Components

API management components are the building blocks that make up a comprehensive API management solution. These components work together to enable organizations to effectively manage their APIs and deliver value to their customers and partners. The primary components of API management include:

API Gateway

The API gateway is the component that sits at the front end of the API management architecture, acting as a traffic cop for incoming API requests. The API gateway is responsible for routing API requests to the appropriate backend services, applying security and access controls, and transforming data between different formats. The gateway also provides features such as caching, rate limiting, and request and response transformations.

Developer Portal

The developer portal is a platform that provides developers with the information and tools they need to consume and build applications using your APIs. A good developer portal includes detailed documentation, code samples, forums, and tools for testing and debugging. The developer portal is a key component of API management as it helps to foster a community of developers who can help you drive adoption and engagement with your APIs.

Reporting and Continuous Improvement

Reporting and continuous improvement are essential components of API management as they help organizations understand how their APIs are used, identify improvement areas, and make data-driven decisions about their API strategies. With the help of real-time analytics and usage reports, organizations can track key metrics such as API request volumes, response times, and error rates. This information can then be used to continuously improve the API management process and deliver a better experience to developers and end-users.

API Lifecycle Management

API lifecycle management is the process of managing the entire life cycle of an API, from design and development to retirement and deprecation. This includes tasks such as versioning, testing, and publishing APIs, as well as managing security and access controls. API lifecycle management helps to ensure that APIs are managed in a consistent and organized manner, enabling organizations to respond quickly to changing business requirements and deliver value to their customers and partners.

Benefits of an API Management Platform

API management platforms provide a number of benefits to organizations that are looking to leverage APIs to drive innovation and growth. Some of the key benefits include:

Improved Security

APIs provide businesses with various benefits such as accessing enterprise services from different devices, promoting innovation, and creating new revenue streams. However, using APIs can also pose risks to data security, which is why it is crucial to protect them with an API manager. API management platforms are essential to ensure the security of APIs as they monitor their usage and implement security protocols such as JWT, OpenID and OAuth. Additionally, API management platforms can provide extra security benefits by controlling access to applications.

Increased Agility

API management platforms allow organizations to quickly and easily expose their existing systems and services as APIs. This enables organizations to respond quickly to changing business requirements and create new opportunities for growth and innovation. With the ability to easily manage and scale APIs, organizations can quickly and easily adapt to changing business needs.

A good example of this is the Emirates NBD Bank. In an interview with McKinsey, senior bank executives explained how they were able to achieve effectiveness and efficiency by shifting to APIs. “We have enabled several strategic business initiatives as a result. One example is our digital onboarding, which is available on mobile phones for self-service and via tablet for assistance in our branches. “We have onboarded more than 100,000 customers with our new process, doing up to 85 percent with straight-through processing in less than ten minutes,” said Neeraj Makin, group head of international and group strategy. Today, the bank offers more than 800 microservices and have seen over a million interactions in the last two years.

Improved Developer Experience

API management platforms provide a centralized location for developers to access and use APIs. With features such as detailed documentation, code samples, and testing tools, API management platforms make it easy for developers to consume and build applications using your APIs. This helps to drive adoption and engagement with your APIs, which can lead to increased revenue and more opportunities for innovation.

Better Monitoring and Analytics

API management platforms provide real-time monitoring and analytics capabilities, allowing organizations to track the usage and performance of their APIs. This information can be used to identify areas for improvement, optimize performance, and make data-driven decisions about your API strategy. With a better understanding of how your APIs are being used, you can make informed decisions about how to optimize your API offerings and deliver a better experience to your customers and partners.

Monetization Opportunities

API management platforms provide organizations with the tools and capabilities to monetize their APIs. With features such as billing, usage tracking, and rate limiting, organizations can set pricing and usage policies for their APIs, creating new revenue streams and driving growth.

Top Use Cases for API Management

The global API management market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 34.5% and reach $41.5 billion by 2031. API management has a wide range of use cases across various industries and sectors. A few of the major use cases are:

Digital Transformation Initiatives

API management is an essential component of digital transformation initiatives as it allows organizations to expose their existing systems and services as APIs. This enables organizations to quickly and easily create new applications and services, and drive innovation in a fast-changing digital landscape. With the ability to manage and scale APIs, organizations can respond quickly to changing business requirements and drive growth.

Open Banking

Open banking is an emerging trend that is transforming the financial services industry. With open banking, financial institutions can securely share their customer data with third-party providers, enabling new financial products and services to be created. API management is a critical component of open banking as it provides a secure and controlled environment for exchanging financial data, helping to ensure that customer data is protected and that transactions are compliant with regulatory requirements.

Data Security

Data security is a critical concern for organizations in a wide range of industries. With API management, organizations can secure their APIs and the sensitive data they carry with features such as authentication, authorization, and encryption. This helps to protect sensitive information and ensures that data is transmitted securely, reducing the risk of data breaches and protecting the reputation of your organization.

Compliance

Compliance is an important consideration for organizations in regulated industries such as healthcare and finance. With API management, organizations can ensure that their APIs are compliant with regulatory requirements, such as the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). This helps organizations minimize their risk of non-compliance and reduces the risk of costly penalties.

Custom API Management Solutions from Blanc Labs

At Blanc Labs, we understand the unique needs and requirements of our clients, and we offer custom API management solutions that are tailored to meet your specific needs. Our API management solutions are designed to provide enterprise organizations with the tools and capabilities they need to drive their digital transformation initiatives, secure their data, and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements.

If you are interested in learning more about the benefits of API management and how Blanc Labs can help you achieve your goals, we encourage you to book a discovery call with our team. Our experienced consultants will work with you to understand your needs and provide you with a customized solution that is tailored to meet your specific requirements.

Articles

What is Open Banking and Is It Available in Canada?

If you’re a bank or financial institution, you should know what open banking is. Open banking consolidates your customers’ financial information. It allows them to access their financial data via a single banking or third-party app, allowing them to make smarter and faster financial decisions.

This guide explains open banking, how it works, and its benefits.

What Does Open Banking Mean?

Open banking is a secure framework that facilitates the exchange of financial data between financial institutions and third parties through APIs (application programing interface).

Think about the last time you wanted to check your investment portfolio. You probably had to log into multiple online portals and bank accounts to get financial information.

Open banking (also known as consumer-directed or consumer-led banking) can shorten this process to a few minutes by bringing all the information to a single dashboard.

When you try to access financial information via a fintech app with open banking, your bank transmits data via a secure online channel to the app. More importantly, you don’t need to provide login credentials when using open banking.

As you can imagine, being able to pull financial data securely from banks and other institutions will allow fintechs and the banks themselves to develop innovative products that enable Canadians to manage finances more effectively.

How Open Banking Works

Here is a typical scenario for how open banking works:

A bank’s customer downloads a fintech app to manage finances and wants to start using it.
The app needs to access financial data, so it prompts the customer to link their bank accounts.
The customer authorizes the bank to securely share financial data with the app.
The bank transmits customer data through a secured online channel.
The app provides financial insights and recommendations.

Isn’t that how apps operate anyway?

Well, yes, except for one key difference. Traditionally, when a person links an app to their bank account, it uses screen scraping and the person’s login credentials to log into it and pull financial data.

On the other hand, open banking uses APIs (application programming interfaces). In simple terms, APIs allow two systems (the banking system and the third-party app, in this case) to communicate and exchange information securely.

Banks or financial institutions are responsible for building, implementing and managing the APIs that will allow customers to connect their accounts with new and innovative apps.

Banks need to find the right API management platform and be mindful of some common open banking API challenges. Alternatively, you can book a discovery call with us, and we’ll take care of the technical aspect of implementing open banking.

Screen scraping is prone to privacy and security risks since you can’t control how the fintech stores or uses your data. The practice can also violate your bank’s electronic access agreement (EAA), which frees the bank of any liability in case of an unauthorized transaction in your account.

Screen scraping will likely become obsolete once open banking becomes available in Canada.

What is Screen Scraping?

Screen scraping is the process of capturing data present on a screen — from a webpage, document, or app — for using it in another system or app.

It’s generally used by apps that need to extract data from legacy systems that lack an API management system or any other source of data extraction.

Data accessed by apps through screen scraping isn’t regulated. Without a standardized system, all third parties use their own level of security and approach to handling data.

Screen scraping platforms also store login credentials as text strings. The lack of encryption leaves your data vulnerable to attacks from hackers.

Unfortunately, an estimated four million Canadians are accessing banking-style services via screen scraping. The growing popularity of financial planning apps strongly calls for a more secure, regulated framework like open banking.

However, open banking still has its limitations. For example, the bank might securely transmit the information to a third party, but if someone hacks the app itself, they might steal your data. So even though open banking is safer than screen scraping, it’s not fully secure.

Benefits of Open Banking

The implementation of open banking in Canada will benefit both you and your customers.

Here are four ways open banking will benefit your customers:

Gives an overview: Open banking provides a secure framework to pull information from your bank accounts, credit cards, investment partners, and other financial institutions. An open banking app can consolidate all your financial data and provide a complete overview in one place without switching between websites and manually extracting information.
Allows shopping around for the best deal: Comparing deals for personal loans, credit cards, or mortgages requires careful research. A comparison app using open banking can speed up the process and help you find the best deal. Apps can also help you understand how likely you are to qualify if you apply for a loan based on your financial information.
Speeds up the application process: Applying for loans or credit requires submitting information, including your financial statements and KYC documents. Instead of manually submitting these documents, an app can store them for you and submit them as necessary when applying for a loan or opening an investment account.
Helps make smarter financial decisions: Fintech apps can use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to create financial roadmaps based on your financial data. You can use these apps to create a budget, understand your spending habits, and find the best investment options based on your risk appetite. Apps may also project cash flows based on your budget and financial obligations so that you can estimate the available balance in your account at the end of each month.

Here are four ways open banking benefits you as a bank or financial institution:

Collaborate with third parties: Collaborating with third-party apps can help you explore data-sharing agreements and identify new opportunities. You can streamline processes and offer more related services to stay ahead of the competition.
Prepare for the future: Open banking isn’t available in Canada, but it soon will be. Over time, your customers will likely demand the privacy and security that open banking offers. As data privacy laws evolve, open banking will ensure you’re in an excellent position to adapt to changes. Moreover, quickly becoming compliant with evolving rules without interrupting service improves customer experience.
Increase market share: Your customers crave convenience. Allowing them to consolidate financial information securely ensures excellent customer experience. Offering open banking is critical to fulfilling your customer’s demands. Over time, you might even lose market share by not offering open banking.
Lower operating costs: Open banking ensures banks’ data lives in a centralized, digitally accessible location. This minimizes data silos and facilitates automation. Automating banking processes like mortgage underwriting allows you to reduce operating costs.

Open Banking in Canada

While open banking is currently unavailable in Canada, it’s available in countries like the UK and Australia.

The Canadian government is working on safely implementing open banking in Canada. The government appointed Abraham Tachjian to lead Canada’s open banking framework development initiative in March 2022.

According to the Final Report of the Advisory Committee on Open Banking, the government had set a target to make open banking operational by January 2023, but implementation is still under process.

However, the government is committed to implementing open banking at the earliest and realizes the benefits it can offer to Canadians.

For example, when asked about how open banking can address the challenges facing BIPOC Canadians, small businesses, and rural/remote communities, Tachijan explained:

“While Canada’s banking framework aims to ensure all Canadians have access to basic bank accounts, some Canadians may be underbanked. Open Banking creates the opportunity for consumer-led banking, which gives consumers and businesses greater control and protection over their financial data, as well as more transparency on how it’s used.”

While the government lays the groundwork to implement open banking, you should ensure you have everything set up to offer customers open banking soon after it becomes available in Canada.

Is Your Financial Institution Ready for Open Banking?

Open banking is about to transform the financial services industry. Your customers will have the flexibility to choose how they interact with your bank, and your competitors will have the option to offer innovative solutions.

Implementing open banking can feel daunting, but partnering with the right team can simplify the process.

Blanc Labs helps banks implement open banking from scratch. Book a discovery call to learn more about our open banking solutions.

Articles

Finding the right API Management Platform

APIs are an integral part of today’s digital world. They are used for secure data exchange, integration, and content syndication. As APIs become more ubiquitous in enterprise businesses, it becomes necessary to manage them efficiently.

Banking and Payments ecosystems are converging with Open Banking and Finance. Whether regulatory or market driven, these digital interactions are happening already – and growing exponentially. Doing APIs and API Management right are central to the growing interdependence and interoperability between Fintechs, Banks and Consumers. Stakeholders are demanding secure access to financial data to drive better customer experiences. A key enabler to that end are the systems that surround APIs.

What is API Lifecycle Management?

API Lifecycle Management is the process of building, controlling, distributing, analyzing, and reusing APIs. It also can include capabilities around intelligent discovery; one pane of glass visible across multiple API gateways and API management systems; bringing to life the visionary end state of monetizing and marketing all these capabilities to external parties to operationalize the concept of “API as a product”. Thus, there are many API Management solutions in the market offering a variety of features. But at the very minimum, an API Manager should allow users to do the following:

Discover APIs

Before you can more effectively govern their lifecycle, you need a simple and configurable tool to find, filter and tag all your API assets into a centralized repository. Simplify complexity and/or get better visibility and facts to position your organization to “open itself up” to the new business realities and opportunities emerging.

Design, build, and Test APIs

The API Management tool should provide everyone, from developers to partners, the ability to create APIs under a unified catalog and test their performance.

Deploy APIs

API Management tools should also allow you to publish APIs on-premises, on the cloud or in a hybrid environment. Additionally, the API Manager may give you a choice between managing the API infrastructure in the tool itself or on your own.

Secure APIs

By providing a central point of control, most API Management tools will ensure that you have full visibility of all your APIs across environments so you can mitigate any vulnerabilities.

Manage APIs

API Management tools should give you a central plane of visibility into APIs, events, and microservices. Most API management tools will allow you to govern APIs across all environments (on-premise, hybrid, cloud) and also allow you to integrate with other infrastructures, including AWS, Azure, and Mulesoft. A good API management tool should also provide multiple predefined policy filters to accelerate policy configuration.

Analyze APIs

An API Manager should give you real time metrics in a unified catalog. By providing data on the business performance or operations across your APIs, you can make better decisions leading to improved business results.

Extend and Reuse APIs

By giving you a single, unified catalog, an API Manager can eliminate duplication and extend the life of APIs through reuse.

The need for API Management

API management centralizes control of your API program—including analytics, access control, monetization, and developer workflows. It provides dependability, flexibility (to adapt to shifting needs), quality, and speed. To achieve these goals, an API Manager should, at the minimum, offer rate limits, access control, and usage policies.

Essential features of an API Manager tool

1. API Gateways

A gateway is the single entry point for all clients and is the most critical aspect of API management. An API gateway handles all the data routing requests and protocol translations between third-party providers (TPP) and the client. Gateways are equally important when securing API connections by deploying authentication and enforcement protocols.

2. Developer Portal

The primary use of the developer portal is to provide a hub, specifically for developers, to access and share API documentation. It is an essential part of streamlining communications between teams. Typically, developer portals are built on content management systems (CMS), allowing developers to explore, read, and test APIs. Other features of a developer portal could include chat forums for the internal and external developer community and FAQs.

3. API Lifecycle Management

As the name suggests, API Lifecycle Management provides an end-to-end view of how to manage APIs. API Lifecycle Management is a means to create a secure ecosystem for building, deploying, testing and monetizing and marketing APIs.

4. Analytics engine

The analytics engine identifies usage patterns, analyzes historical data, and creates tests for API performance to detect integration issues and assist in troubleshooting. The information gathered by the analytics engine can be used by business owners and technology teams to optimize their API offerings and improve them over time.

5. API monetization and marketing

API management tools can provide a framework for pricing and packaging APIs for partners and developers. Monetizing APIs involves generating revenue and keeping the API operational for consumers. Through usage contracts, you can monetize the microservices behind APIs. An API management tool will offer templatized usage contracts based on predefined metrics, including the number of API calls. This empowers innovative external players to help drive your business in ways you have not dreamed up yet – and still do it securely.

How successful is your API management?

Now that we know the features of an ideal API management software, how do you evaluate its success for your API efforts? Here are a few ways to track your progress:

Speed
How rapidly can you launch your APIs to meet your business goals? Latency and throughput are ways to measure the speed of deployment. Other areas to measure speed would be onboarding and upgrading APIs.

Flexibility
Flexibility is the breadth of options available to developers when adopting APIs. The greater the flexibility, the higher the cost and effort to manage the API.

Dependability
How available your APIs are to developers. One way to measure dependability is downtime. Quota is another way to restrict how many API calls can be made by a developer within a certain timeframe. Enforcing quotas makes API management more predictable and protects the API from abuse.

Quality
Stable APIs with consistent performance reflect higher quality. It is a way to measure a developer’s satisfaction with the API.

Cost
The above four factors contribute to cost. If your API management software provides a better view of all your APIs, it will reduce duplication and costs. Reuse of APIs is another way that you can save costs.

How are you managing API complexity?

If you are a business leader concerned about how to meet market demand through the creation and deployment of APIs, or you would like to monetize and reuse your existing APIs and reduce costs, then you need structured API management.

In partnership with Axway, Blanc Labs offers a way to manage your APIs to bring maximum business value. Axway’s API Management Platform enables enterprises to manage and govern their APIs for developing and applying their digital services.

Book a discovery call with Blanc Labs to learn more.

News

Blanc Labs and Axway partner up to provide integrated open banking solutions for all

Posted on 5 October 2022

Axway (Euronext: AXW.PA), a leading provider of open banking built on the Amplify API management platform, is proud to announce its partnership with Blanc Labs, a trusted financial service and healthcare innovation partner.

While the largest banks are already well along their digital journey, many others are still tasked with competing in what can feel like an uneven playing field. Financial institutions must have a clear strategy for implementing, governing, monetizing, and marketing APIs to ensure a frictionless customer experience and better business results.

“We want to help all banks – anyone who has something to bring to the table – to strategize and compete in the open banking arena,” said Eyal Sivan, Head of Open Banking at Axway. “They will thrive as they embrace open APIs, build on trusted customer relationships, and meet their customers’ needs wherever they are.”

“At Blanc Labs, we help our clients achieve extraordinary results by accelerating their digital transformation journey,” says Blanc Labs CEO Hamid Akbari. “APIzation will enable secure data interoperability within the financial services ecosystem. Open banking and Banking-as-a-Service pose a disruption challenge as well as a massive growth opportunity for banks and fintechs.”

The specialized solutions offered by Blanc Labs together with Axway make API integrations more efficient and cost-effective thanks to universal API management. Benefits of the unified API platform include:

Increased productivity as developers easily find and repurpose APIs, eliminating duplication of efforts
Less technical complexity by unifying and simplifying API services across the organization
Stronger security thanks to a unified, vendor-agnostic view of all APIs
Faster legacy system upgrades through an API-first layer, which simplifies the addition of new services
More robust governance through centralized documentation for multiple developer teams

“Partnering with Axway, a pioneer in API management and the open banking space, is a natural fit for us. Out-of-the-box support for open banking and common data standards will significantly reduce the cost of building next-gen financial services and will accelerate time-to-market for our clients,” Akbari adds.

As banks gain confidence with Axway and Blanc Labs open banking solutions, they can move from optimizing processes and keeping up with industry standards to unlocking new business models, discovering richer customer data insights, and building highly personalized services to delight their clients.

Learn more about the Axway-Blanc Labs partnership and how they can help banks fully participate in the growing open banking ecosystem, here.

About Blanc Labs

Blanc Labs is a preferred partner for enterprises looking to digitize and build the next generation of technology products and services. To help companies rapidly deliver on their digital initiatives, Blanc Labs has developed expertise and bespoke solutions in a wide variety of applications in financial services, healthcare, enterprise productivity and customer experience. Headquartered in Toronto, Blanc Labs serves the Americas through operations in Toronto, New York, Bogota and Buenos Aires. For more information on how Blanc Labs is building a better future, visit www.blanclabs.com.

About Axway

Axway enables enterprises to securely open everything by integrating and moving data across a complex world of new and old technologies. Axway’s API-driven B2B integration and MFT software, refined over 20 years, complements Axway Amplify, an open API management platform that makes APIs easier to discover and reuse across multiple teams, vendors, and cloud environments. Axway has helped over 11,000 businesses unlock the full value of their existing digital ecosystems to create brilliant experiences, innovate new services, and reach new markets. Learn more at axway.com.