The Paypers

The report cites the case of India, Thailand and Australia, which have adopted a prescriptive approach where governments and central banks are playing a highly active role in defining the open banking ecosystem. Often times, in these jurisdictions, banks are required to share customer-permissioned data and third parties that want to access such data are required to register with particular regulatory or supervisory authorities to do so, it says.

Other markets such as Japan and Hong Kong, have adopted a facilitative approach where an industry standard-setter or government agency issues guidance and recommended standards and/or releases open API standards and technical specifications. Banks and third parties are not obliged to comply but may do so if they choose. Meanwhile, China, Singapore and South Korea have taken more market-driven approaches where there are no explicit industry-wide rules or guidance that require or prohibit the sharing of customer-permissioned data by banks with third parties. In this approach, banks may choose to release their own APIs.

The report delves into the case of Singapore, which it says has been an early adopter and leader of open banking and APIs in the region. In Singapore, development of open banking has been facilitated by regulators, and in particular, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), which has, among other initiatives, provided open banking/APIs guidelines, set out a framework, and which currently operates the Financial Industry API Register, which tracks APIs by functional category as they are launched.

Singapore leads Asia Pacific in Open Banking – EPAA report