OpenBankingProject.ch
OpenBankingProject.ch was founded in February 2019 as a cross-organizational initiative to promote the open banking culture in Switzerland. The founding members include the Business Engineering Institute St. Gallen, DXC Technology Switzerland, Ergon Informatik, Finnova , Finstar ( Hypothekarbank Lenzburg ) and the Institute for Banking Law at the University of Bern . Avaloq has also been a project partner in the initiative since September 2019 .
Open banking
Open banks
The term open banking means the technological opening up of the banking business for third-party providers of financial services in the course of the digitization of the financial sector. In most cases, the third-party providers are financial technology companies for which the term fintech company has become established in the German-speaking world. They offer services that allow customers, for example, to bundle the data of several bank accounts on one smartphone app.
The data exchange between the systems involved takes place via open interfaces. The bank customers must give their consent for this. The third-party providers can then access the banks' IT systems from outside . In English, such programming interfaces are referred to as Application Programming Interface (API) and, analogously, open interfaces as Open API. Therefore, the term API banking is also used as an alternative to the term open banking .
Europe and the Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2)
The European Parliament and the Council of the European Union (EU) in 2015, the second PSD (Engl. Payment Service Directive 2, PSD2) adopted. Among other things, it stipulates that banks must open their systems for data exchange with third-party providers or other institutions, known in English as Third Party Providers (TPP), from autumn 2019.
Switzerland
In Switzerland there is no corresponding agreement that requires the banks to be opened up and PSD2 has no direct impact, at least in this regard. The Swiss Bankers Association opposes the government's obligation to open up banking systems and advocates “market-based solutions”.
The Swiss Fintech Innovations (SFTI) association, founded in 2016, is a broad-based initiative in the area of open banking in the finance and insurance industry. He accompanied the founding of the open banking project Switzerland as an advisory board.
With its Common API working group, the SFTI aims to create an API standard for Switzerland. In addition, the infrastructure operator SIX Group with the Corporate API project , Swisscom with the Open Banking Hub and the Swiss Commission for Standardization in the Financial Sector (SKSF) with the Payments Data Dictionary have open banking initiatives running.
OpenBankingProject.ch
Starting position
Business ecosystems are also gaining importance in the financial industry and an important prerequisite for the collective creation of value is, among other things, the efficient exchange of information between the individual actors. This requires open system architectures and standards.
aims
The OpenBankingProject.ch initiative aims to promote the operationalization and use of standardized APIs in the Swiss financial industry and beyond. "The days of proprietary isolated solutions are over, the rapidly changing requirements can only be efficiently addressed together with banks and partner companies," says Hendrik Lang, CEO of the banking system manufacturer Finnova, who is one of the founding partners of the open banking project Switzerland.
Knowledge platform, sandbox and best practice
For this purpose, the OpenBankingProject.ch consortium provides a knowledge platform and a test environment for API applications (so-called sandbox ) on the website.
The knowledge platform forms the basis of the open banking project Switzerland. It shows which companies and solutions offer or use which APIs. Third-party providers can also use the sandbox to test the interfaces of their applications. As far as possible, all information is available to all interested parties in the sense of an open source approach.
The project also provides best practice recommendations with regard to security and controllability in data transmission and coordinated contractual elements for cooperation between third-party providers, banks, infrastructure operators and core banking system manufacturers.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f OpenBankingProject.ch, founding agreement and basic concept, St. Gallen, February 26, 2019.
- ↑ Open Banking. In: MoneyToday.ch. Accessed May 15, 2019 (German).
- ↑ Directive 2015/2366 / EUof the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 November 2015 on payment services in the internal market, amending Directives 2002/65 / EC, 2009/110 / EC and 2013/36 / EU and Regulation (EU) No 1093/2010, and repealing Directive 2007/64 / EC. In: European Commission. January 12, 2016, accessed January 22, 2020 .
- ↑ Susan Emmenegger: PSD2: vertices and relevance for Swiss financial services. Institute for Banking Law, University of Bern, 2018, accessed on January 22, 2020 .
- ↑ Swiss Bankers Association (SBA): Payment Services Directive (PSD2) - position paper of the SBA. February 2019, accessed January 22, 2020 .
- ↑ Directory of members of the Swiss Fintech Innovations Association. Retrieved January 22, 2020 (English).
- ↑ Common API project from Swiss Fintech Innovations. Swiss Fintech Innovations, accessed on January 22, 2020 (English).
- ↑ Jürgen Petry (Swiss Fintech Innovations): Swiss API Initiatives: An Overview (Presentation). 20th March 2019.
- ↑ Marc Burkhalter, Christian Betz, Prof. Dr. Stefanie Auge-Dickhut, Prof. Dr. Reinhard Jung .: Orchestrating Value Co-creation in Business Ecosystems. (Manuscript) . 2019.
- ↑ Ruedi Maeder: Open Banking: Standardized interfaces from Swiss FinTech Innovations. In: MoneyToday.ch. October 8, 2018, accessed May 15, 2019 .