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Improve products via the Rabo Developer Portal

Rabobank provides APIs to developers via the developer portal, so that they can improve their products and create new opportunities for their own clients and for ours. Tjeerd Tesselaar, Area Lead Product Development for Identity, Payments & Open Banking, talks about the background of the developer portal and he appeals to developers: share your ideas and requests!

More possibilities

Over the past few years, we’ve all become more and more accustomed to convenience and flexibility. Whether we’re listening to music, renting a car or booking a place to stay: we expect to be able to arrange everything quickly and easily. The same applies to banking. Making our APIs available enables us to better reach and serve our clients. This development is referred to as ‘open banking’.

Open banking

Traditionally, a bank developed financial product and services and offered them via its channels and platforms, such as Internet Banking and our own Rabo Banking App. However Rabobank increasingly offers products and services in such a way that we can be there where our clients need us. In so doing, Rabobank shows its commitment to ‘open banking’. Since the introduction of European PSD2 legislation in 2019, we have made more and more services available via APIs on our developer portal.

Realtime and connected

Third party developers are essential for this development. The developer portal gives them access to our APIs, which allows them to create new, personalized and frictionless experiences for their clients and for ours. A real-time connection between the bank and a third party opens the doors for new forms of financial services.

For example, it is already possible to gain insight into your income and expenses, and you can find out if you qualify for business financing in less than 15 minutes through Fundr. Via Google Assistant, you can request your most recent transactions. All of these services are based on the APIs we offer. And then there are social and technological developments such as the sharing economy and the Internet of Things.

“In the future everything is connected and real-time making the lives of users easier.”

Imagine: rather than buying a car, you hail it and only pay for using it. After a quick setup, the car automatically debits an amount from your bank account. It doesn’t get any easier than that.

But what is Rabobank’s role in all of this? We make sure that third parties can conduct these interactions securely. And of course, we’re very careful about who can use the clients’ data, such as their transaction records. A third party can only access data if the client has given consent.

Identification via banks

At the moment, we mainly offer financial products and services via our APIs. But it doesn’t stop there. One excellent example is Rabo Identity Services, through which we help companies onboard their clients smoothly and securely: clients can identify themselves quickly and reliably via iDIN and DigiD. These companies know that they are in good hands with us, and they trust that as a bank, we will treat their clients’ personal data with due care. And they’re right, because that’s our core business.

Interested in what you need

Rabobank’s developer portal is constantly expanding and we’re bringing information and tools together to help you as a developer find what you need. It already offers a wealth of information, such as the API documentation for our PSD2 services but also comprises the APIs and SDKs for Rabo OmniKassa and SmartPin. We furthermore offer instructions and testing tools in addition to the relevant documentation. We are constantly improving, so we’re very interested in your opinions, tips and requests. How can we best help you?

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me via: openbanking@rabobank.nl.