On 30 May 2023, the API Centre published its Minimum Open Banking Implementation Plan (the ‘Implementation Plan’).

The Implementation Plan comes after several rounds of consultation involving a range of participants, including banks, large companies and startups. It also follows the November 2022 announcement by David Clark, the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, that banks will be the first sector to implement a consumer data right. For further information on the announcement, please see our previous alert which can be found here.

The API Centre, which was launched in May 2019 by Payments NZ, is driving the development of open banking in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Minimum requirements

The Implementation Plan confirms the minimum requirements application programming interface (‘API’) providers must meet to have standardised APIs technically and operationally usable by the API Centre’s third parties. This includes technical API implementation, consistent customer experiences and API providers being operationally ready to partner with third parties.

Timeframes

In addition to the minimum requirements, the Implementation Plan provides a timeframe for the four largest New Zealand banks to be ready with the API Centre’s two standards:

• v2.1 Payment Initiation API standard; and
• v2.1 Account Information API standard.

ANZ, BNZ, ASB and Westpac are required to be ready with the Payment Initiation API standard by May 2024 (BNZ is already ready) and with the Account Information API standard by November 2024. In addition, Kiwibank has until May and November 2026 respectively to be ready with the respective standards.

The two v2.1 API standards allow a customer to set up and make electronic payments and share their banking data with third party businesses of their choice, with their consent.  The standards are supported by the API Centre’s security profile.

What's next?

Payments NZ’s chief executive Steve Wiggins acknowledged that the Implementation Plan is an “important step” to enabling third parties, such as fintechs and payment service providers, to plan and develop products and services with API providers, such as banks.

As mentioned in our previous alert, the Government will proceed with an engagement and consultation round on the proposed consumer data right, with an exposure draft of legislation to be released later this year. We will provide an update on this once it is released.

See links below for more information:

• API Centre’s media release on the Implementation Plan can be found here.
• The Implementation Plan can be read in full here.

Start a conversation

If you would like a briefing on any aspect of, or have any questions in relation to this Alert, please contact Liz Lim on +64 9 909 6341, Catriona Grover on +64 4 498 0816, David Ireland on +64 4 498 0840, or email the team at bankingandfinancialmarkets.nz@dentons.com.

This alert was co-authored by Oscar van der Laan, a solicitor in our Banking and Financial Services team.