Open Banking Automates Onboarding with Dynamic Registration

Objective

Established by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), Open Banking Limited’s mission is to create software standards and industry guidelines that drive innovation. The objective was to act as an implementation services entity, ensuring financial institutions implement standards correctly while enabling third parties to build out their propositions effectively.

Challenge

Open Banking needed to create a trust framework so banks and third parties could identify who is authorized to access specific APIs at all times. This required a searchable directory of all players and a system to confirm an entity’s regulated status with real-time updates. A major technical hurdle was supporting dynamic client registration to automate the onboarding process between third parties and banks, which is essential for scaling the ecosystem and reducing manual entry barriers.

Solution

Open Banking chose Ping Identity rather than building the functionality internally. The solution provides a CIAM stack that meets financial-grade security requirements (including SCA and consent management) and supports PSD2 mandates. Because many UK banks already used Ping as a core IAM vendor, the solution offered a consistent experience and de-risked delivery. The platform enables secure access to accounts (XS2A) through open APIs and handles the complex verification processes required for a trusted central repository.

Results

The use of Ping Identity allowed Open Banking to hit its implementation deadlines and go live on time. By July 2018, the directory had successfully onboarded 22 Account Servicing Payment Service Providers (ASPSPs) and 28 Third-Party Providers (TPPs). Today, all participants in the UK ecosystem go through an enrollment process to become trusted identities in the central Ping repository, delivering a secure, seamless, and personalized experience for millions of banking customers.