Enabling open finance through APIs: report on payment initiation

Report by the Consultative Group on Innovation and the Digital Economy (CGIDE) established at the BIS Representative Office for the Americas

This report summarises the analysis conducted by the Technical Task Force (TTF) of the Consultative Group on Innovation and the Digital Economy (CGIDE) on the solutions available for payment initiation within a centralized application programming interface (API) architecture.

Specifically, two solutions for payment initiation are explored:

(i) the first makes use of a central validator (CV) auth-app such as the one described in the first report published by the CGIDE in December 2020, provided by a CV for the authentication and validation;

(ii) the second involves the use of a similar functionality natively integrated in a payment initiator's payment app.

Both solutions build on the secure identification and authentication of users analysed in previous CGIDE work. In addition, the report summarises the main insights gained from meetings held with several industry participants.

The work of the CGIDE TTF did not include a review of all possible alternatives for payment initiation to achieve secure and remote identification and authentication through APIs. From that perspective, this document should only serve as a general reference for stakeholders that want to develop their own payment initiation initiatives, and consequently, no CGIDE TTF member is endorsing the adoption of open finance for the analysed identification and authentication API and CV scheme.

Comments are welcome and should be addressed to: CGIDEreport@bis.org,