National Australia Bank (NAB) will become the first major Australian bank to launch an Application Programming Interface (API) Developer Portal as part of its commitment to improving customer experiences through collaboration.
The portal, which will go live before Christmas, will make selected NAB APIs publicly available to allow third party developers to connect to select sets of NAB data.
The developer portal will begin as a closed beta with NAB approving a small number of developers to take part in the initial concept, before running an open beta more broadly early next year.
The platform will start with two NAB APIs which will host data relating to NAB branch and ATM locations and NAB foreign exchange rates.
Developers approved to take part in the beta will be able to plug into the NAB data for testing and possible integration to their own systems (websites or mobile apps, etc).
NAB Chief Operating Officer Antony Cahill said: “We have invested in our technology and built a rich source of APIs that we have been using for both internal purposes and external partnerships to leverage capabilities and deliver better experiences for our customers.
“With the rise of the digital age and evolving customer expectations, APIs have become core to banking infrastructure to enable rapid deployment of various functions across multiple channels to meet those customer needs and quickly keep pace as those needs evolve.
“Our API strategy is based on three key streams of customer enablement, partnership arrangements and open API categorisation which this portal will be an integral part of.
“We are collaborating with a number of partners to both provide and receive data leveraging API technology including Xero, MYOB and VISA. We want to keep building our ecosystem with likeminded organisations to allow us opportunities to innovate and improve our experiences for customers,” he said.
NAB started using API technology in 2013 with the NAB Flik product (now Pay to Mobile in the new NAB mobile banking app) and has continued to evolve, with the new mobile banking platform rebuilt on strategic API architecture and the establishment of numerous partnerships to both provide and receive data using APIs.
You can visit the NAB API Developer Portal website here: https://developer.nab.com.au
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What is an API?
Application Programming Interfaces (API), allow the exposure of new and existing functionality from core systems within organisations. This in turn enables others (internal or external – depending on access) to place these features in their websites or mobile apps.
How does the NAB Developer Portal (closed beta) work?
NAB will provide two sets of open API data (branch and ATM locations and FX rates). For the closed beta, NAB will approve a small handful of developers to test and learn with, before opening the beta to further third parties early in the New Year. All participants will be vetted by NAB to meet our security standards.
