OpenAPI Leading The Open Banking API Conversation

I’ve been looking through the ecosystems of banking API platforms trying to understand the technical, business, and political approach of banks when it comes to the API conversation. While Capital One is definitely leading the conversation in the U.S., I’ve also been looking to better understand what is happening around the PSD2 banking API conversation in the EU and UK.

I was pleased to find OpenAPI present in the OpenBankProject PSD2 API Explorer, as well as leading the specification standards conversation over at Open Banking in the UK. The existence of the OpenAPI allows analysts like me to quickly load up the OpenAPI in an API client like Postman or Restlet, and become more intimate with what paths, and definitions are available–developing my awareness of where banking API standards are headed.

OpenAPI is proving to be a great way to facilitate a conversation about an API at the team, as well as industry level. While the learning curve involved with OpenAPI adoption is real, I’m finding it to be an essential diplomatic tool when it comes to harmonizing the industry level conversation around my Human Services Data API work. OpenAPI provides a central reference that business stakeholders can reference at the 100K view, while also enabling developers and architects can discuss at the nitty gritty technical level.

I’m bookmarking all the OpenAPIs I find around PSD2, and I’m on the hunt for more OpenAPIs around FHIR. These are the two leading API standards conversation going on at the industry level, helping define a common API interface within two heavily regulated industries–banking and healthcare. While there is still a HUGE amount of work within these communities to truly achieve the adoption everyone is envisioning, I find the fact that their are OpenAPIs being used as a positive sign. It shows that we are moving towards more substance than just talk, and acknowledges the conversation stimulating powers of OpenAPI, in addition to the potential for delivering API deployment, management, testing, monitoring, SDKs, discovery, and other essential stops along the API lifecycle.