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Open Banking kicks off in Brazil The first of four phases of Brazil's Open Banking implementation has started, as part of the country's broader agenda of modernization of the national financial ecosystem. In the initial phase, there will be no sharing of data on customer registration or transactional activity. Instead, companies participating in the open banking ecosystem will need to open data on their service channels and the characteristics of banking products and services through open application programming interfaces (APIs). In July's second phase, participating institutions regulated, authorized and supervised by the Banco Central do Brasil will start sharing customer data, with their consent. This will be followed by August's third phase where consumers will be able to pay bills and make money transfers outside their bank's environment. The last phase, forecast for December, relates to sharing of additional customer details, in areas such as foreign exchange services, investments, insurance and salary accounts. https://www.bcb.gov.br/detalhenoticia/17307/nota

Plaid serves as the connective glue between financial apps like Robinhood and Credit Karma and customers' bank accounts. Through the use of application programming interfaces (APIs), the San Francisco-based fintech links the two sides, allowing financial data to flow between them.

Mastercard has introduced its Innovation Engine, an API based plug-and-play digital platform that enables issuers and merchants a simplified path to rapidly deploying digital capabilities and experiences to their customers. It will deliver unique and digitally integrated solutions and consumer experiences through a single connection.

Maldives Monetary Authority (MMA) has signed an agreement with TietoEVRY, to implement an Instant Payments System. The project also involves developing a digital bank solution with a mobile application to enable the creation of new services, promote innovation and increase competition in the Maldives. Also it will give nonbank payment service providers access to the account-to-account domestic payments scheme using open APIs, thus enabling digital and integrated payment services. https://www.mma.gov.mv/#/news/PR-MCS-2020-7(english).html

Financial API provider TrueLayer has recorded an eight fold increase in U.K. consumers using Payment Initiation (PI) to pay for goods and services online between March and July. PI is a new form of online payment enabled under the second European Union Payment Services Directive (PSD2) that allows customers to make payments directly through online banking. 88% of the growth was from people with bank accounts held at traditional financial institutions, with account holders at challenger banks such as Monzo and Revolut accounting for 12%.

The Central Bank of Bahrain ("CBB") launched the Bahrain Open Banking Framework (Bahrain OBF) to ensure holistic implementation of Open Banking services by the industry. This framework includes detailed operational guidelines, security standards and guidelines, customer experience guidelines, technical open Application Programming Interface (API) specifications and the overall governance framework needed to protect customer data. These standards follow the comprehensive rules on Open Banking which were previously issued in December 2018.

With PSD2's Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) deadline fast approaching, Swedish open banking platform Tink is claiming that European lenders have failed to provide the proper technology environment for third party providers to access payments data as required by the new law.

Binance experienced issues with APIs and withdrawal processing due to network issues with Amazon Web Services on August 23. Amazon has confirmed to The Block that AWS has experienced a temporary outage in the Asia Pacific (Tokyo) region.

Stripe has rolled out a new card issuing product in the U.S., allowing businesses to create, manage and distribute tailored virtual and physical cards to their customers and employees. Stripe Issuing is an API that allows businesses to issue cards on a self-serving basis. These programmatic cards can be set up quickly and come embedded with capabilities to give flexibility and cater to different needs.

The Central Bank of Russia (CBR) released a comprehensive strategy for the next three years of payments development in the country. Prominent among the CBR's strategy is an emphasis on its digital ruble. The CBR is planning for open APIs that will allow the digital ruble to integrate with any other private payment platform, and for the platform to offer offline functionality. It expects an initial prototype to be ready by end-2021, to be followed by initial pilots in 2022, and an implementaion roadmap by end-2022. https://www.cbr.ru/press/event/?id=9761

At best NFTs could represent digital autographs or digital unwashed worn sweatshirts. Currently, most of them are simply "blank digital claims" that have no legal value and no link with the actual creation but the word of the third party issuer. The use of public blockchains doesn't bring anything more than a regular database coupled with a PKI, accessible through APIs. If the content is not cryptographically signed by the creator, then it should be sold on the creators' websites.

China's government-backed Blockchain Service Network (BSN) is building a universal digital payment network (UDPN) to integrate various countries' central bank digital currencies (CBDC). Currently at the design stage, the beta version of UDPN is expected to launch in the second half of 2021. The BSN plans to complete the UDPN development in five years. With the UDPN, the BSN aims to enable a standardized digital currency transfer method and payment procedure. The new system intends to bring together systems like banking, insurance, enterprise resource planning and mobile apps through APIs to provide a cost-effective global payment solution.

SWIFT's Payment Pre-validation service that enables banks to verify payee account details before an international payment is sent, removing a key point of friction in cross-border transactions, went live. Most cross-border payments are processed without issue, but one of the leading causes for those that fail or lose time is incorrect beneficiary information - from misspelled names to transposed account numbers. And because they are detected late in the process, these issues can be among the most time-consuming and costly to resolve. SWIFT's Payment Pre-validation service tackles this problem by allowing a sending bank to confirm account details, via an API, with the receiving bank from the very beginning of the process so that any data or account problems are identified right up front.

TransferWise has launched TransferWise for Banks in the U.S. This allows banks, credit unions and other financial institutions to integrate TransferWise's API directly into their infrastructure, so customers can make international payments from within their banking app.

In 2016, Ghana's AgroCenta launched AgroTrade, an online platform that connects smallholder farmers in the staple food value chain to a wider online market. The start-up provides access to truck delivery services and real-time market information via SMS and IVR. Building on this platform, AgroCenta now enables farmers to receive mobile money, build their credit score and access financial services (like crop insurance) through its latest mobile product, AgroPay. AgroCenta has also set up a mobile money API integration partnership with MTN and Vodafone to pay smallholder farmers directly and seamlessly via mobile money through its AgroPay platform.

Paxos Trust Company launched Paxos Crypto Brokerage, a new product offering that enables companies to integrate crypto-asset buying, selling, holding and sending capabilities into their own applications. Paxos Crypto Brokerage is an API-based solution that provides access to the crypto-asset market while managing the underlying regulatory and technological complexity. Revolut US is the first partner to leverage Paxos Crypto Brokerage for US customers of its consumer banking application (see above).

US dollar-pegged stablecoin Circle will add USDC support to Stellar's array of products, among them payments tools, infrastructure APIs and business accounts products, by the first quarter of next year. Circle has long sought to end its dependence on the Ethereum blockchain. In June, it announced support for the Algorand blockchain.

The Wyoming Division of Banking approved crypto-centric Avanti Financial Group's application for a bank charter, paving the way to opening for banking business as early as October 2020. Avanti also announced the Avit stablecoin, which supposedly offers more legal certainty than existing stablecoins because it will be issued under existing U.S. commercial laws. Avit will be programmable via Avanti's application programming interface (API). It is designed for use by institutional traders and corporate treasurers U.S. dollar payment settlement solutions do not suffer from the delayed settlement and chargeback issues of traditional payment solutions, or the legal, accounting and tax issues of stablecoins.

Crypto cards have become a must-have for many crypto services. Hoping to reduce the risk of blocking transactions, companies have been looking again and again for reason why their customers should use "plastic." But a crypto card is a placebo that does not solve the problems of either users or fintech companies - its only goal is to bring profit to payment systems and intermediaries. All cards are serviced by payment systems that create a closed consumption ecosystem; banks and processor companies pay an annual fee or transaction fees to the credit card companies and payment system operators for the possibility of issuing cards, sellers transfer to banks on average 1%-4% of the transaction amount for acquiring servicing, and various intermediaries, aggregators, API providers, etc. also collect a commission. For crypto transactions the fees are higher, since the traditional financial industry regards these transactions as high-risk.

Coinbase said its autoscaling was unable to keep up with a huge traffic spike that left many users unable to log in on June 1, when the exchange experienced a 5x traffic spike over four minutes around 16:05 PDT while Bitcoin was approaching $10,000. Coinbase said it redeployed the API at 16:20 to increase the number of machines dealing with this spike in traffic. Another two-minute outage followed "due to instances saturating and being marked unhealthy" before the exchange was back online.