Chris Michael, co-founder and co-chief executive officer of Ozone API has identified “the introduction of the concept of service requests or service initiation, whereby a fintech can initiate any service that a bank already offers” as the most interesting development in Open Banking standards currently.
He was speaking to Huw Davies, co-founder and co-chief executive officer of Ozone API, as part of the launch of Ozone API’s ‘Global Voices’ campaign.
Ozone API’s Huw Davies
The campaign will see a global expert discuss the latest developments in the Open Banking standards space with Davies each week over the coming months.
Responding to Michael, Davies said: “It’s standards-based foundations for embedded finance, that’s the thing that really drives the P&L [profit and loss] for a bank – if they can sell more products, capture new customers and really drive their core business.”
“It gives banks a really strong incentive to develop really well-performing APIs,” added Michael.
In the first episode, Davies also discussed “how payment initiation is developing so it can support so many different and additional use cases”.
Michael noted that variable recurring payments (VRPs) are “starting to take hold”.
“It started in the UK, it’s going to be a key part of the payment initiation services in Saudi Arabia, it’s being introduced in Brazil, so I think it will be a global phenomenon soon,” he said.
Davies and Michael also talked about Ozone API’s ‘Global Open Data Tracker’, the challenges still faced by the industry, and single global standards versus each market driving their own innovation.
Several standards have recently been updated on the Global Open Data Tracker, including Bank Interfaces for Standardized Payments, Czech Standard for Open Banking, Open API Framework for Hong Kong, and Payments NZ.
Huw Davies is taking part in a panel debate, ‘Open Finance: What lessons can we learn from other jurisdictions?’ at Open Banking Expo UK and Europe on 18-19 October in London – register to attend here.
