Deutsche Bank introduces the API for credit cards and deposits

With its API program, Deutsche Bank has been trying to attract developers for quite some time. In addition to the mandatory transfer interfaces and account information provided by the European Payment Services Directive (PSD2), credit card transaction inquiry functions have now been added. In addition, securities holdings can be requested from the bank and past securities orders

Up to now, the two new APIs of the program only work in demo mode. For stock trading, only papers from Porsche, Apple and Daimler are available. If you want to test the API, you need to register on the developer portal, which includes the name and e-mail address. Then select a pseudo-client from a list and authenticate in the App Explorer with its data in the bank.

The "client" must then choose the data to which the application will be able to access. After that, App Explorer can be used, for example, to call account data and securities transactions – provided the customer has accepted it. Companies wishing to use the API in production applications must undergo a licensing process with Deutsche Bank.

Modern technology instead of screen scraping

The functions offered to the manufacturers of banking applications could be interesting: until now, they often depend on the reading of screens (scraping screen) to be able to display the data of sale or deposit by credit card. Orders to buy or sell securities can usually only be placed in the application of the bank concerned.

Deutsche Bank believes that its API also has the advantage of supporting REST and JSON for data exchange and uses OAuth for authentication. Both are different from the procedures used in the FinTS international standards.

A first neutral standard vis-à-vis banks

The institute also thinks that its accounts are becoming more and more attractive thanks to third-party applications. Application developers, however, engage with a bank. The NextGenPSD2 alternative API developed by the Berlin group for PSD2 compatible third party and bank communication shows that things can be done differently. It is now the de facto standard in the EU and is used by all major German banks.

(Ck)