Bank of Israel promotes open banking in Israel

The Banking Supervision Department of the Bank of Israel handles the regulation of the standard for open banking in Israel. In order to enable this, the Bank of Israel began a project to regulate the API standard for open banking. The project is expected to be fully implemented by the Israeli banking system during the year 2020. This series is another step in the framework of the measures taken by the Bank of Israel to promote competition in the Israeli banking system and the implementation of the reform to increase competition. The Bank of Israel sees national importance in promoting open banking in Israel's financial system.
The open banking system will allow third parties to receive from the banks, with the client's consent, financial information of the customer. Information sharing can improve customer services, encourage new financial players, and increase competition for financial services. In order to be able to benefit from the many benefits that can be derived from the open banking ecosystem, an API standard is required for the financial system, through which financial information can be transferred to third parties, including Pintek.
The standard for open banking will include a definition of a broad banking dictionary, services, system rules, information security and privacy protection. The customer's financial information will include information such as current account balances, current account transactions, commissions and interest rates, information on the credit taken by the customer from the bank, information about the customer's deposits and savings at the bank, and more. On the basis of this information, various services will be developed, including: concentration of information from accounts at different banks of the customer, comparison of financial costs, offering financial value and financial intermediation, advice on financial conduct, initiating financial transactions (payments, savings, etc.).
In this step, the Bank of Israel joins a series of leading regulators in the world (such as the UK, Australia and others) who publish the principles of open banking to the financial system in their country.
As part of the open banking regulation process, the Bank of Israel holds ongoing discussions with relevant government ministries and regulators, as well as with the banking system and the new service providers (the Pintek Companies). In order to strengthen this discourse and to adjust the standard set for the needs of these companies, the Bank of Israel today issued a call to the Pintek Companies, in which they are called upon to raise various issues relevant to the project to the Bank of Israel.