Akana Open Banking Platform | Open Banking Solution

Akana Open Banking Solution

The banking sector is undergoing massive disruption driven by regulatory changes, particularly in Europe where Open Banking and PSD2 regulations are set to transform how customers move and manage their money. The Akana Open Banking API solution empowers account providers to achieve compliance with Open Banking and PSD2 standards via a robust end-to-end API management platform.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has required the nine largest current account providers in the UK to implement Open Banking solutions, which enables customers to allow Third Party Providers (TPP) highly-secure access to their current accounts for the purposes of gathering transaction data or making payments on their behalf.

A similar regulation is the Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2), which requires all payment account providers (not just current account providers) in the EU to allow third-party access. PSD2 does not call for an open standard, but Open Banking will have to meet the legal requirements of PSD2.

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The Role of APIs

To allow TPPs access to customer account details or bank payment services, banks will require a dedicated interface, which is widely expected to be API-based. APIs offer an effective way to quickly and securely expose business capabilities to whichever consumer audience they are intended to be shared with.

In modern integration architectures, APIs are used as a means to effectively expose capabilities from enterprise systems in a consumer-friendly format. Typically, the published API offers an interface based on current open standards and styles. This usually has a positive effect on the development effort required to consume the API - after all, the consumer is shielded from the technical intricacies and complexity that may be associated with the downstream enterprise services (that may have been created using "legacy technology").

Achieve PSD2 and Open Banking Compliance With the Akana Platform

The enterprise-class Akana Open Banking API solution specifically addresses the requirements of PSD2 and Open Banking by offering a comprehensive API management platform focusing on security, reliability, scale, and interoperability.

Akana's Open Banking solution opens up communications between banks, their customers, and their emerging partner ecosystems. Akana has verifiable success in the open banking sphere, having launched a comprehensive open banking API platform for a major European bank in 2017.

Protect Customer Data

With the Akana Platform, you can eliminate vulnerabilities and ensure systems are properly protected against attacks.

Akana is a hardened PCI DSS v3.0 Level 2 certified service provider.
Secure development practices with source code scanning built-in to continuous delivery processes, combined with regular automated and manual penetration testing to ensure the security of the platform.
Provides a built-in access control system and integrates with identity and access management providers.
Ensures the privacy of data in flight and at rest with a built-in PKI and key distribution model, including comprehensive HSM integration.
Provides integrated denial-of-service and threat prevention.
Offers the richest authentication and authorization capabilities, including OAuth, OpenID Connect (both play a central role in Open Banking standards for TPP authentication and authorization) – JWT support, JOSE, Integrated Security Token Server, and SAML 1.1/2.0.

Monitor and Improve API Performance

The Akana Platform includes a powerful analytics engine built using a massively scalable, globally distributed NoSQL store that is architected to meet international data privacy standards.

Operational Analytics: Monitor the performance and availability of your APIs. Watch for trends and detect risk as it happens.
Developer Analytics: Track how developers are using your APIs and which packages, versions, and offers they use the most. Gain valuable insights into how you can improve your API programs.
Business Analytics: Build dashboards that show how your APIs are impacting your business, identify high-impact areas, and monitor critical aspects in real time as your business evolves.

Deploy Anywhere

The Akana Platform is the only product that is equally at home in the cloud and on-premises.

Cloud: Akana is a global, on-demand, multi-tenant infrastructure offered to customers as SaaS.
On-premises: Akana is the on-premises API platform of choice for large enterprises; its ease of installation and upgrade is a major advantage.
Hybrid: Customers can run their own API brokers either on-premises or as an AWS AMI, leveraging the Akana Platform in the cloud to manage these brokers and provide the central developer portal.