The UK is leading the way to open up aess to its financial system,aording to the UK Payments System Regulator which published its annual report yesterday.The UK has been a prime mover in the effort to ensure that new financial services providers (such as Fintech payment startups)can pete by forcing banks to agree and publish a set of Open APIs that allow aess to a range of information and services that would otherwise have been closed off to challengers to the status quo. 

This approach is being rapidly pied right around the world,with new announcements about API aess to bank data being made almost every day.

Hannah Nixon,MD at the regulator says that the Open API initiative ‘…will not only give customers more choice,but also give them the opportunity to use a wide range of new and innovative personal banking and payment services.

We expect this year will be the most suessful,with more challenger banks and fintech panies expected to gain either direct or more innovative ways of aessing the interbank payment systems than in any other year.They’ll also be able to do this cheaper and quicker than ever before.’

The APIs aim to deliver far ranging capabilities.For example,they can open up aess (once permission is provided by a customer)to details about the people and anisations that they make payments to.Fine grained security means that a business might be able to give its auditors aess to every transaction that went through their aounts,while suppliers might just have aess to an e-billing portal.Read more from the annual report here.And find out more about the banking Open API project in the UK here.

Call us crazy,but at XBRL International we think that open APIs uld make the valuable information ntained in taxonomies and reports much easier to use.

中文新闻：英国欲开放API以推动金融科技