Open Banking Use-Cases: Going Beyond the Vanilla

There are Open Banking led use cases in the hundreds out there as we know it today. While these have come into fruition across multiple geographies globally, it is important to note that they are continuously being developed across regulated as well as market-led jurisdictions. Embedded finance, as defined by OpenPayd, is simply using API driven banking or payment services to integrate financial services within other environments and ecosystems.

Among those in MENA that have adopted regulations, includes Bahrain who has fully implemented a framework, Saudi Arabia with their recent issuance of a circular to go live with regulated Open Banking, Oman with an Open API strategy, and UAE in discovery phase. While observing these developments, it can be said with confidence that the region is still in its nascency. We are setting up the foundation with what are commonly known as ‘Vanilla APIs’ that are being phased out in the stipulated regulations, such as but not limited to accounts, balances, beneficiaries, and transactions on the AIS side. On the other hand, for PIS, single domestic payment, scheduled payments, and single international payments.

While we have experienced implementation on the retail end of the spectrum so far, we have keenly observed a growing appetite from corporate as well. For example, one may presume that it is more complicated to factor in the required fields from a corporate as though they were an individual account holder in a data-based call, which would require more than just name, account type, balance, currency, customer ID, account scheme & identification, and transactions- but also authorized signatory, party details, parent company, and commercial registration. Even more pressing on the corporate side are optimization of cash flow for immediate access to funds, frictionless payments, and enhanced account functions governing hierarchical access.