We’re pleased to announce another milestone in the evolution of open banking in Aotearoa New Zealand, with the release of version 3.0 of our API standards.
This major release was shaped by significant input from our community of standards users, including more than 200 hours of industry working group and governance input.
This high level of engagement reflects the value the industry sees in the functions that version 3.0 will enable, and we thank all of those who contributed their time and expertise to the development process.
What’s new in this version
Building on existing API standards, version 3.0 allows an API Provider to notify a Third Party of a change in the status of a consent, such as when a consent has been revoked by a customer.
This functionality also has potential for expansion in future standards releases to support a wider range of innovative payments and account information services.
API Providers using version 3.0 must allow Third Parties to establish subscriptions to be notified of changes to consents. Establishing a subscription is optional for Third Parties, but if they choose to subscribe they must provide an endpoint as defined in the standard. This marks the first time in our API standards that Third Parties have been required to supply an endpoint to enable a function.
As well as the new event notification function, version 3.0 features a major security profile update, designed to further enhance the overall safety of open banking APIs by drawing on international best practice in security standards in line with FAPI 1.0.
The new security profile also features revised formatting to support easier and more efficient adoption by developers, and has been decoupled from the functional elements of the standards to allow the API Centre to release future security profile updates independently.
Version 3.0 will also be made available soon through the API Centre sandbox, powered by Glueware’s open banking accelerator. Standards users and community contributors will receive further updates when this occurs.
Deprecation of API standards version 1.0
In line with the publication of the API standards version 3.0, standards users have signalled support to the API Centre to deprecate version 1.0.
Deprecation indicates to the broader ecosystem that a given standard version will be expired, and will no longer be valid for use in the market from a specific future date.
Read our notice published today for more information on the deprecation of version 1.0.
We are now consulting with standards users to determine the date on which we will expire version 1.0. Standards users will be given at least a minimum of six months’ notice before expiry.
How to get involved
You can get involved with the API Centre’s work in many ways, from subscribing to our email updates to stay informed about news and activities, to registering as a Standards User or a Community Contributor, which also gives you access to our sandbox. If you’d like to talk to someone in the team, feel free to contact us.