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"Open and harmonised APIs have allowed network-neutral and cross-technology platforms to carry out financial data exchange while tackling system sustainability issues by providing them a single, standardised set of APIs rather than customised APIs. Through open and harmonised APIs, improved and expanded financial services can be offered to the public. These financial services could enable a higher level of financial inclusion globally, thus reducing the digital access gap within and between countries."

This Boston Fed paper discusses the key developments, drivers, and considerations in the U.S. market that support progress towards open banking and application programming interfaces (APIs) and how APIs offer a wide variety of new services. It finds that opening a bank's platform to third-party applications can create synergies with innovative technology businesses to build a new generation of digital financial activities that enhance the consumer experience. Open banking can create a paradigm shift in how financial institutions (FIs) treat the issue of ownership, storage, and use of data. However, several risks and challenges need to be addressed. The industry is waiting for guidance from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Interoperability is lacking and many FIs struggle to replace legacy infrastructures with fully digital platforms, which can require considerable investment. FIs may be struggling to prioritize open banking and API permissioned data with competing projects.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) published the results of its Project Rosalind joint work with the Bank of England. It explored how a universal and extensible application programming interface (API) layer could connect central bank and private sector infrastructures and facilitate retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) payments. It demonstrated that a well designed API layer could work with different private sector applications and central bank ledger designs and that a set of simple and standardized API functionalities could support a diverse range of use cases.

Visa is piloting a suite of application programming interfaces (APIs) that will allow banks to offer bitcoin services. The Visa Crypto APIs pilot program will let clients "easily connect into the infrastructure provided by Visa's partner, Anchorage, a federally chartered digital asset bank, to allow their customers to buy and sell digital assets such as Bitcoin as an investment within their existing consumer experiences." Visa is already working with crypto companies to issue bank cards and has partnered with 35 crypto firms to date, but this is the first time the company has offered crypto services to banks.

So, what happened in open banking 2019? In Australia, open banking is finally launched; Payments NZ in New Zealand launches open banking APIs and ther NZ banks follow; Mexico continues to be the hot spot for LATAM; Brazil launches open banking model; Additional API offerings launched in Malaysia to further enrich the open banking market there; US banks begin conversations on open banking and to develop open banking 'like' APIs; the Central Bank of Nigeria places open banking on its Payments Vision Statement (PSV) 2030 to become the next EMEA country to implement open banking; and Bahrian makes claim to implementing open banking.

The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) outlined a five-year digitalization plan to modernize the country's domestic payment landscape. The CBK says it will work to define standards for API development and mandate data portability with hopes that more options and innovative solutions will be made available for users in Kenya to choose from. These standards will include API specifications for identification, verification and authentication; customer account information/data access; transaction initiation; and formats and coding languages for APIs. https://www.centralbank.go.ke/2020/12/23/invitation-for-public-comments-on-the-draft-kenya-national-payments-system-vision-and-strategy-2021-2025/

This Bank for International Settlements (BIS) report explores the development of an identification and authentication application program interface (API) that could be used to implement privately and publicly administered open finance solutions with seamless scalability. It analyzes an API scheme based on the establishment of a central validator (CV) that allows secure relationships to be created between financial institutions and third parties, without the need for them to come into direct contact with each other. It provides the necessary elements to guarantee that each party involved accesses only the user information strictly necessary to allow the provision of a specified financial service.

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision today published its Report on open banking and application programming interfaces (APIs). The report monitors the evolving trend of open banking observed in Basel Committee member jurisdictions and the use of APIs.

The BIS Innovation Hub London Centre has launched the Project Rosalind TechSprint, inviting expressions of interest to come up with retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) use cases. Participants will be required to develop feasible prototypes by using the set of application programming interfaces (APIs) developed in phase one of Project Rosalind. It aims to develop prototypes of an API platform for the distribution of retail CBDC. The purely experimental setup is based on a two-tier distribution model, comprising a central bank at the foundation of the retail CBDC system and with customer-facing activities carried out by the private sector payment interface providers (PIPs).

The BIS Innovation Hub London Centre invites companies and organizations to submit expressions of interest to join the Project Rosalind to develop application programming interface (API) prototypes for distributing CBDCs. The group will be structured into two tiers - API users and technical advisors, with different roles and responsibilities for each. The project, run jointly with the Bank of England, aims to address some of the questions around developing a retail CBDC system, including: how to improve public-private sector collaboration? How to maximize interoperability, encourage competition and enable adoption? How might retail CBDC meet current and future consumer needs in a fast-changing payments landscape? The objective is to explore how this interface could best enable a central bank ledger to interact with private sector service providers to safely provision retail payments.

"Changes made to the public API of major cryptocurrency exchange Binance seemingly reveal that the company is working on implementing margin trading."

Circle's business clients can now sign up for the Circle Business Account, a toolbox of APIs that allow developers to build on top of its USDC stablecoin.

"Circle APIs offer major payment rails like cards, wires and blockchain transfers - offering multiple ways for users to transfer money and transact with USDC, the world's fastest growing dollar stablecoin. Today, Circle is adding ACH as a payment rail, with comprehensive support available across both Payments and Payouts products. Customers can enable their users to make and receive payments using ACH, with seamless conversions into and out of USDC."

This BIS report summarises the analysis conducted by the Technical Task Force (TTF) of the Consultative Group on Innovation and the Digital Economy (CGIDE) on the solutions available for payment initiation within a centralized application programming interface (API) architecture.

"All ether that's touched Tornado Cash is now tainted. US-touching crypto exchanges, such as Coinbase, will be expected to block tainted ether. Infura, the ConsenSys API that almost all Ethereum transactions go through, is also blocking ether that touched these addresses. Alchemy, a similar API, is doing the same. [Crypto Briefing] Circle, which issues the USDC stablecoin, has blacklisted all Tornado Cash addresses, and frozen 75,000 USDC."

The National Bank of Kazakhstan (NBK) published a report on the development of the ecosystem of open application programming interfaces (APIs), open banking and digital financial services in Kazakhstan.

The Bank of England has put out a request for proposal (RFP) for proof of concept work on a sample central bank digital currency (CBDC) wallet, to help make a potential CBDC product more tangible for internal and external stakeholders, eg. as a prototype for future user testing. It will also support the Bank's work towards the BIS Innovation Hub's 'Project Rosalind', by testing integration of a front-end with the Rosalind API. Key deliverables will be (1) a mobile wallet app (built on both android as well as iOS); (2) wallet website; and, (3) an example merchant website, and (4) back-end server to serve mobile app and website, including calling the core ledger API and stored user data and transaction history.

The Bank of Israel (BOI) is inviting anyone (from Israel or abroad) interested in studying or experimenting with the use of a digital shekel to submit a request to join the Digital Shekel Challenge. Preference will be given to uses with innovative characteristics in the payments market, whether they are improvements to existing applications, or completely new applications. Contestants will be asked to technologically develop various use cases for the digital shekel, by using the application programming interface (API) layer at the center of the proposed two-tier central bank digital currency (CBDC) model. The API layer provides functionalities that enable service providers to connect to the digital shekel system and offer end users among the public a wide and innovative range of services, while maintaining end users' privacy and the security and reliability of the payment system.

The BIS Innovation Hub and SWIFT announced the three winners of the ISO 20022 hackathon, which invited teams to build and showcase solutions that enhance cross-border payments, using the ISO 20022 standard for payments messages and application programming interfaces (APIs).