Developers can use the platform to navigate through customer account and transaction structures and build their own applications to sit above the banking infrastructure. AXA has created a sandbox environment where developers can run and test their applications, and provided a sample personal finance management application.

The API supports a Representational State Transfer (Rest) model to provide access to a set of resources relating to customer service operations and account and transaction data sets, each supported by a suite of client-side libraries.

Pierre Janin , CEO of AXA Bank, comments: "We wanted to provide the developer community a platform that will allow them, we hope to invent tomorrow's banking applications, which are both innovative and practical everyday for our customers."

To kick off the project, the bank is inviting developers to compete for an inaugural EUR50,000 'Grand Prix' challenge, setting a 21 May deadline. Submissions will be voted on a by a five-strong panel comprising professionals from the financial, Web and media sectors.

AXA is following in the footsteps of Credit Agricole, which unveiled its own application marketplace and software developer kit earlier this year. The two banks are at the cutting edge of a movement that has been taken up enthusiastically by Internet and software companies that are keen to tap in to the burgeoning freelance developer community for new ideas and innovations.