APIBox: A Technology Sandbox for Open Finance

Open finance is built on the transfer of financial information in an efficient, standardized, and secure way through application programming interfaces (APIs). These interfaces are the core technology that connects financial service providers with innovative third parties providing account information and payment initiation services, with financial service users consent. For businesses, meeting technical and regulatory standards for APIs is a complex and challenging process that involves testing the associated business models. This paper presents APIBox, a solution to this difficulty that uses open-source technology. The Inter-American Development Banks borrowing member countries can use the solution to develop a technology testing environment that participants in the local financial ecosystem can then use to experiment, validate APIs, and contribute to their development. APIBox users can create API integrations and data exchange flowsusing synthetic data but real interactionsand explore open finance use cases. They can also use the tool to help them meet standards and to test integration with other key components of the public open finance infrastructure. APIBox flattens the learning curve and lowers the cost of testing for new entrants, such as account information service providers and payment initiators, thereby fostering competition. The IDB provides the source code and technical assistance for its application across different regulatory contexts. The codes design is based on international standards such as RESTful APIs, FAPI 2.0, RAR, Grant Management, and the ISO20022 data dictionary. APIBox is open, secure, collaborative, traceable, and interoperable.