Payments NZ reveals 300 in queue for open banking APIs
Payments NZ has revealed an army of around 320 companies waiting for banks to open up to open banking.
Banks are accused of stifling competition by going slow on developing the API connections (application protocol interfaces) which are needed for the safe development by non-banks of open banking services.
These services include things like money management and payment apps, which people can use to better manage their money lives, and make payments.
But they also include things like bank term deposit and comparison apps, and easier bank switching, which could threaten banks’ profitability.
The APIs, which are secure technology interfaces between banks and third-party fintech companies, are being created under the auspices of Payments NZ, the self-styled “governance organisation at the heart of the payments system”, but which is a companythat is co-owned by ANZ, ASB, BNZ, Citi, HSBC, Kiwibank, TSB and Westpac.
Both the Reserve Bank and Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew
Bayly see open banking as the best hope for increasing competition in the banking sector to bring down the high cost of banking in New Zealand.
However, banks have been accused of going slow on developing APIs, blocking the rise of open banking.
Jane-Rene Retimana, head of strategy at Payments NZ, told delegates to The Retirement Commission Te Ara Ahunga Ora’s national strategy conference in Auckland on Wednesday: “It has taken a little while to get up and running. We had some really good impetus pre-Covid times, and then things slowed down a little bit, but that impetus is back on.”
She acknowledged former Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Kris Faafoi, who was at the conference as the new chief executive of the Insurance Council Te Kāhui Inihua o Aotearoa, who urged banks in 2019 to move faster on open banking.
The big four banks have a deadline of the end of this month to have their APIs ready for payment services, allowing non-bank fintech companies to develop innovative payment services for the public.
By the end of November, they must have APIs ready for customer account information which could usher in a whole new raft of services delivered by non-banks, including personal money management apps, and bank-switching services.
Retimana said the API centre had a “pipeline” of about 320 companies, and half of those were keen on using open banking APIs.
“There is quite a big pipeline of interest,” she said.
In the UK, many fintech companies had used the open banking “rails” to get bank customer data, with individual customer consent, to provide personal financial management apps to those customers, Retimana said.
“It’s very prevalent in the UK.” Payments NZ had done market research on what bank customers wanted from open banking, which showed appetite for change from the public.
It found around 70% of 18 to 44-year-olds would be happy to use an app developed by a non-bank to give them more control over paying bills.
A slightly lower proportion would be happy to use an app developed by a non-bank that could show them all their accounts at the same time, instead of having to use multiple bank, lender and insurer apps.
Just over half would be keen on using an app developed by a non-bank that would make it easy for them to shop around for bank services like term deposits, or personal loans.
Retimana said younger people were more willing to use non-bank apps than older people, who were less trusting, and more concerned that giving non-bank fintech companies access to their data could leave them at risk of losing data or money to cyber-crooks.
It wasn’t only public-facing uses of APIs that could help increase competition, the conference heard.
APIs between businesses could make applying for loans, or accounts, much easier, if people were able to authorise the likes of finance companies, or other banks, to use API links with banks to retrieve their banking data to analyse to check things like whether they could afford the payments of loans they were applying for.