The U.K. Competition and Markets Authority is looking to open application programming interfaces to spur competition in the country's banking sector.
The CMA, which acts as a competition watchdog in the country, released a
The authority sees that as a problem and, in an effort to alleviate it, is proposing a requirement that banks in the U.K. introduce an open API standard by early 2018, which would allow both business and consumer customers to share their unique transaction history with other banks and trusted third parties.
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The startup firm Paymency is seeking to offer an API-driven "banking-as-a-platform" service to the U.S. financial services industry.
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Attendees at the recent White House fintech summit shined a spotlight on shared innovation challenges. To overcome them and help the U.S. make progress in financial services, we need to embrace these three regulatory reforms.
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Instead of fighting to own customer data, banks need to embrace a new model: becoming personal data banks that help customers do more than manage money.
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This would make it easier for bank customers to shop around at different financial institutions to find the right products and accounts that best suit them, the regulator said.
The authority is also asking that banks provide technical support and financial backing to an initiative by the independent charity Nesta to develop a set of tools providing comprehensive information about bank charges, service quality and credit availability. Nesta, formed in 1998, seeks to increase the U.K.'s innovation capacity.
The report comes as government agencies across Europe are trying to increase competition. Last year the European Commission released the
