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How One Bank Answered the Demand for Open Banking Services

by | Jan 4, 2023

With Adaptive Integration Fabric, we were able to go from proof-of-concept to production in under two months.

–  Adaptigent customer (read full case study here)

This quote is an eye-opener, clearly illustrating the ability of our API-middleware solution to modernize the mainframe. Even more surprising, it comes from a banking executive, where any business process initiative must meet rigorous data performance and security requirements.

Banks, like all major sectors using mainframes, such as insurance, healthcare, energy, etc., need to modernize. They need to provide services that meet today’s expectations. Smart, fast, mobile.

However, mainframes were never designed to interact with platforms beyond the green screen, presenting a major obstacle for the industry’s chief modernization challenge — open banking.

The open banking initiative seeks to grant third-party service providers access and control of customers’ personal and financial data so that these providers, called fintechs, can offer services tailored to the customers’ needs.

Open Banking Services and API Integration

Legacy system integration is key to Open Banking success

Although the mainframe provides a reliable and secure foundation, using the mainframe to call out to modern applications such as those used in open banking poses a significant challenge. Enter API middleware, the programming interface necessary for the functionality of open banking services. With APIs, core technology can be used in tandem with modern applications to provide banks and fintechs with enhanced abilities for functions such as:

  • Payment processing
  • Fraud detection
  • Investment
  • Retirement savings
  • Loan applications

Most importantly, these services can be made available at any time, from any place, using any device — conveniences consumers are demanding across many industries.

Open Banking: From Concept to Reality

A major European bank needed to answer these consumer demands to maintain their position as a leader in innovation and customer service. Their goal: become the first in Europe to instantly settle payment transactions. As noted in the quote above, the bank was able to use Adaptigent’s mainframe expertise and the Adaptive Integration Fabric to execute their project in record time.

Fabric creates powerful bi-directional APIs without manual coding through an easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface. Fabric facilitated the quick creation of complex APIs, enabling the bank to connect its core systems to applications that allow the transfer of money in real-time.

Fabric generated the code that the bank then inserted into an existing COBOL program that called two APIs. The first API generated a customer-level authentication token that was transferred to the second API, which is called the FIS payment application from the legacy COBOL program.

FIS then executed the payment, allowing the bank to be the first bank to execute an instant payment in France.

Read the full case study