Nordea has picked through the hundreds of developers to have expressed interest in its new Open Banking programme to find a select few who will now pilot an account information service (AIS) API.
Unveiled in early spring, the API platform is Nordea's effort to capitalise on the ground-shaking changes to the European payments landscape envisaged under the forthcoming revisions to the Payment Services Directive (PSD2). Under the rules, banks will be obliged to provide licensed third parties with secure access to customers’ accounts.
The Nordic bank says that within a couple of weeks of inviting developers to join its programme, it had received 700 sign ups.
Now, a group of 22 customers, fintech firms and third parties have been picked for the first pilot, which will provide a sandbox environment where developers can test the AIS API, retrieving account information details, account balances, and transaction history. A user consent management process is also being tested, while later pilots will focus on initiating payments through a separate API.
Nordea says that the pilot programme is designed to gather feedback that will help it improve functionality, and identify third parties that can be valuable partners.
In the longer term, says the bank's Sanela Dulic: "Open Banking will provide our customers with various new products and services, while keeping the customers firmly in control of what information they wish to expose and which products they wish to use.
"We see this as an opportunity to embrace the changing landscape. Our goal is to strengthen our collaboration with fintechs and go beyond the regulation by providing premium APIs which fit the changing needs of customers across all segments."