Bank of Russia updates Open API standards
The New Open API Standards were developed jointly with market participants and take into account the results of the pilot testing of API-based services with real clients.
The largest financial market participants had been testing the standards from 2024, creating services for their clients, such as a personal financial assistant or corporate multibanking. Thus, owing to Open APIs, individuals and companies, having given a personal data consent, can see and manage the products opened to them by different credit institutions via the interface of one selected bank.
The package of the standards stipulates general provisions, principles, and recommendations related to implementing Open APIs and ensuring cyber security when using this technology.
‘The publication of the Open API standards as recommended guidelines is the first step towards realisation of the Open Finance model allowing various financial institutions, and not only banks, to exchange information about clients upon their consent. This will enable market participants to make offers tailored to their clients’ needs already now, while in the future, this will also have a positive effect on competition’, commented Director of the Bank of Russia’s Financial Technology Department Ruslan Bulatov.
Today, the standards are advisory in nature. The Bank of Russia participates in the development of a legal framework for the transition to the mandatory use of the Open API standards in the financial market.