Standard Chartered boosts open banking capabilities
The bank has unveiled a set of new initiatives aimed at the developer community.
Standard Chartered has earlier today announced that it is bolstering its open banking capabilities, with a focus on driving innovation and technology culture through openness and partnerships with developers, corporations and fintechs to co-create better client products and services through the sharing and use of Application Programming Interface (APIs).
The bank has unveiled several new initiatives aimed at the developer community.
The first of them is the aXess platform, whose purpose is to offer developers open access to the bank’s open source code for banking products and its APIs, applications, and libraries. It serves as an adaptive layer in its technology architecture to drive more connectivity and partnerships between developers, corporations and fintechs, so innovative solutions can be co-created.
Another of the initiatives is aXess Labs, which is a Bengaluru-based test lab, where the Bank’s in-house developers can experiment with cutting edge technologies, accelerate ideation to service delivery, enable new business models, and share open banking best practices, capabilities, and tools across the Bank.
Finally, the aXess Academy aims to enhance the skills of the Bank’s developers, providing them with the technical know-how required for open banking through training programs, hackathons, and technology leadership roundtables. It is also a forum for networking with tech networks in other industries.
Dr Sebastian Wedeniwski, the Bank’s Chief Technology Strategist said: “The future of banking is changing fast with massive technology-led innovations. Our aXess initiatives to boost our open banking capabilities aims to enhance the developer experience and upskill the technology expertise of the Bank, while guiding developers on our journey to build for openness and integration.”
Standard Chartered has been seeking to drive innovation in the banking space. It has been co-creating solutions to improve client experience and has been forging new partnerships and solutions to change how it approaches and thinks about banking. Recently, the bank announced the establishment of a strategic joint venture with PCCW, HKT and Ctrip Finance to deliver a new standalone digital retail bank in Hong Kong. The joint venture will be conducted under a new entity, which, was granted a licence in March to operate a virtual bank in Hong Kong by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA).
Standard Chartered has also recently announced the SC Ventures Fintech Bridge, an online platform, through which the bank seeks partnerships with fintechs to solve business challenges which meet current and future client needs. It will soon be launching an open digital platform for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in India, to help them grow by providing access to a range of financial and business solutions.
