Rationale
The OPEN BANK PROJECT is an ambitious, potentially radical project. Exposing banking transactions to devices and services outside the bank's closed systems is a big step. The notion that an organisation might expose its transactions to the scrutiny of another public body, or indeed to the public, is a further leap. There are deep-rooted cultural associations regarding the connection between money and privacy. Yet recent information revolutions such as YouTube and Wikipedia were unpredicted developments, as indeed were such previous communication revolutions such as email and television, and we believe that the OBP is in the vanguard of such transformations.
Corruption, fraud and the recent global banking crises are dramatic and poignant pointers to the need for radical change. We need to bring transparency, public vigilance and open technology to bear on the world of public (and optionally private) financial transactions. But that can't happen if the data is hard to get at or is outdated by the time it becomes ‘public’. There will be vested interests that oppose the project. For this reason we propose to introduce the OBP initially to a group of sympathetic European banks, account holders and consumers so that further adoption will spread. Thus a sizable proportion of this project will deal with test sites. One of the test sites will be the OBP itself.
This potential is in line with the European Transparency Initiative
Benefits for individuals
Individuals can use a greatly improved range of applications to access their bank accounts. They can administrate their bank accounts from different web platforms and share data with their friends and family.
Benefits for banks
Banks can offer a greater range of cost effective and secure products and services. Both its personal and business customers can access their accounts via the tools and platforms that emerge supporting the OBP API.
Benefits for governments
Governments and the EU can insist that funding recipients use an Open Bank Project enabled account thus making the receiving organisations more transparent.
