Ozone API launches ‘Beyond Compliance’ Open Banking solutions

By Joy Dumasia

Ozone API, developer of the leading standards-based software for open banking and open finance, has launched a suite of solutions that enable banks to move beyond compliance and convert their APIs into more strategic and commercial channels. The enhancements to Ozone’s open API platform give banks and financial institutions the ability to comply with PSD2, create new open banking and open finance revenue streams and deliver services including Variable Recurring Payments (VRPs) and Confirmation of Payee (CoP). 

Ozone’s founding team led the creation of the UK open banking standard and delivered the sandbox for the Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE). Ozone now powers open finance interfaces for more than 50 banks and financial institutions worldwide, delivering high-performing, standards-compliant open APIs. 

VRPs are a relatively new addition to the open banking standards, first introduced in the UK standard last year. They allow TPPs to grant a long-lived consent to customers for repeating automated payments within defined parameters, enabling a much broader range of payments use cases. The upgrade to Ozone’s platform provides banks with the tools needed to expose VRP APIs and monetise the opportunity. Ozone was the first to enable VRP when the standards were updated last year and powered the VRP Hackathon in partnership with Mastercard, Worldpay, Accenture and others.

The CMA has set a deadline of July 2022 for the UK’s 9 largest banks to implement VRPs for sweeping services, and these banks are expected to launch their own commercial or premium VRP offerings imminently. Ozone’s market-leading Open API platform ensures all other institutions will not be left behind when the CMA9 banks introduce VRPs.

Chris Michael, CEO and Co-Founder of Ozone API, said: “The market is evolving beyond simple compliance. With Variable Recurring Payments launching in the UK, the moment has arrived where Open Banking starts to become commercial.”

Ozone is also excited to launch the Ozone Authenticator. This mobile application allows financial institutions to deliver a full authentication and consent management solution to satisfy regulatory and business requirements for Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) relating to open banking and open finance. The Ozone authenticator can be delivered as a stand-alone app or integrated into the financial institution’s existing mobile application.

Ozone also offers an advanced solution to help banks protect their customers from fraud. Account-to-account payment fraud is a growing problem, with the latest figures show that losses caused by authorised push payment (APP) fraud soared by 71% in the first half of 2021, which has overtaken the amount stolen in card fraud. As the risk of APP fraud intensifies, CoP is becoming a minimum requirement for banks. The Ozone CoP solution helps banks deliver inbound and outbound CoP APIs, either standalone or as a simple bolt on to their open banking API solution.

Open finance is now starting to become a reality around the world. The Central Bank of Brazil recently launched the country’s open finance regulation, and it is only a matter of time until the UK does the same. Ozone enables all financial institutions to deliver high performing APIs that reduce the complexity of open finance and reduce the cost of ownership. Ozone has already seen great success in Brazil, powering open banking APIs for many of Brazil’s banks through its partnership with Tecban.

Huw Davies, Co-Founder and Chief Commercial Officer at Ozone API said: “Since PSD2, banks have faced a serious challenge in implementing open API technology. We enable banks to meet this challenge and overcome the complexity of building open banking services that comply with standards. The next step is to help banks move beyond compliance and use open banking technology to create commercial channels. The Ozone API solves the headaches of complying with PSD2 and enables banks and financial institutions to build new revenue streams in the era of open banking and finance.”