Open Banking participants

Description of personas involved in Open Banking activities

In this article, you can find profile descriptions of typical actors of the Open Banking scene. You can learn their goals, responsibilities, interrelations, and dependencies.

Open Banking participants

End user

The end user in Open Banking (OB) is usually an individual with no technical or engineering background who is a consumer of final Open Banking products/services. Typically, there are two end-user personas in OB: the Fintech app user and the bank customer. Although they can both benefit from what OB provides (safe and transparent data exchange and financial operations), most often they are not aware of OB enablement and integration processes that are behind their sound and secure services. Those are Fintech app developers, banks, and most of all, Open Banking enablers (such as ACP) who make Open Banking work for the end users.

Why use ACP for enabling Open Banking

Refer to Why use ACP for enabling Open Banking to to check how ACP helps enable Open Banking for different parties and the scenarios it covers to get them OB-compatible.

Fintech app user

The Fintech application user is an individual who has a financial application installed on a device and intends to use it for OB purposes, such as aggregating financial data from different banks and/or accounts, filtering the data to retrieve specific information, performing financial operations (for example, transfers), or displaying the transaction history. Most ofter the Fintech app user is a customer of a bank or a few banks.

Bank customer

The bank customer is an individual using products and/or services of the bank. The bank customer can communicate with the bank in multiple ways, for example, by visiting a bank branch in person, by using a web portal of the bank, or by contacting their customer call center. One more way for the bank customer to connect to the bank is the use of the financial application (Fintech app), which gives him/her benefits of connecting to a number of banks at the same time with one medium only.

As mentioned, the bank customer can use the bank portal for exchanging information and performing operations, which is usually handled by the self-service portal. The self-service portal is a website offered by the bank (on top of the bank portal) to the customer for verifying and maintaining the profile information, checking data on accounts and transactions, performing financial operations, and, finally, managing data security and privacy (for example, permissions).

Fintech app (TPP)

The Fintech app, also called the TPP (third party provider) app, is a financial application that enables the end users of financial services to retrieve and/or process their financial data. Typically, the Fintech app allows the users to connect to their banks for acquiring financial information and/or performing financial operations.

The Fintech application needs to comply with Open Banking standards so that the users can share their data safely from the bank to the app. To achieve the optimal level of security and privacy, OB standards specify what methods of authentication and authorization the Fintech app needs to use.

Read more

For more information on the Fintech application and requirements that OB defines on its architecture and operation, see Open Banking flow of actions powered by ACP.

For the Fintech app to serve its purpose, it needs to integrate properly with the bank. It requires the use of OB-compatible APIs both from the application and form the bank.

Check the OB Quickstart

Check the OB Quickstart by ACP to see how ACP can support developing Fintech apps, building bank consent pages, creating customer self-service portals and admin panels of the bank so that they are in line with OB standards.

Bank

The bank represents an institution that provides financial services and products to the customers. Consequently, the bank is responsible for storing, processing, and sharing its users' data according to the highest privacy and security standards. There are a number of requirements that the bank needs to meet for the OB compatibility. Altogether these requirements are to enable the safe integration with the bank for all those who decides to connect it. OB standards defined for banks focus on APIs that the banks exposes. There are also requirements concerning the identity provider of the bank and services that the bank provides, such as the custom consent page, the customer self-service portal, or the admin portal of the bank.

ACP supports Open Banking integrations end-to-end

ACP offers the set of features that offload the bank from a tedious and challenging work of building a compliance with Open Banking specifications.

Bank admin

The bank administrator is a a professional with a technical background hired by the bank to administer users' profiles, accounts, and data. In the context of Open Banking, the bank administrator is responsible for security and privacy of users' data. The admins have access to all users' security and privacy settings, for example, to permissions granted to Fintech apps for accessing user’s data. In the admin portal of the bank, they can modify the security settings on behalf of the users, for example, by revoking permissions granted to the apps. The admin portal needs to comply to OB standards in terms of its architecture and operation.

Check the admin portal in the OB Quickstart

Check the OB Quickstart by ACP to see a sample administrator portal that is integrated with ACP and, hence, Open-Banking-compatible.

Bank developer

The bank developer is a professional with a technical background hired by the bank to handle any programming tasks. In the Open Banking context, the bank developer can be responsible for building the bank consent page, the customer self-service portal, the bank admin portal, and more.

How ACP helps bank developers keep their code OB-compatible

ACP provides an easy integration for the bank consent page. The integration of the bank with ACP ensures the compliance with Open Banking standards not only for the bank consent page but also for other bank services, such as the self-service portal and the admin portal. Read more on the OB-compliant consent page in Building the Open-Banking-compliant consent page with ACP.

Check the self-service portal and the admin panel in the OB sandbox

Check the OB Quickstart by ACP to see a sample customer serf-service portal and a sample administrator portal that are integrated with ACP and, hence, Open-Banking-compatible.

Individual developer

The individual developer is a person with technical skills whose goal is to create a financial application compatible with OB standards. The developers can build Fintech apps for themselves or for commercial purposes. In both cases, they need to follow specific requirements that OB sets for Fintech apps.

How ACP helps developers build OB-compatible apps

For information on requirements that OB defines for Fintech applications and the support that you get from ACP in that context, see Open Banking flow of actions powered by ACP.

OB enabler

Open Banking is complex and multifaceted. To ensure a safe and secure ecosystem for financial operations, it sets strict requirements for its participants. Such an approach poses a challenge not only to individual users and developers but also to financial institutions (such as banks) who want to enter on Open Banking.

To cope that challenge, there are services that can help Fintech-app users, banks, and developers to meet OB requirements and get involved in OB easily and smoothly. OB enablers, such as ACP, offer diverse services and features that allow individuals and institutions to get Open-Banking-compatible. They serve as catalysts to processes of the integration between different parties required for the healthy and operational OB ecosystem.

Check ACP in the OB sandbox

Check the OB Quickstart by ACP to see how the ACP component is configured to support multiple OB scenarios and help you get compatible easily.