To coincide with the release of Open Banking, Monzo has launched an interim version of its API for third party companies authorised by the FCA as Account Information Service Providers (AISPs).
From today, Monzo’s AIS API means that companies such as Yolt, Chip or Plum could use it to build integrations that they can offer to all Monzo users. As it is an interim service, it does not currently show the full functionality of Monzo’s main API, but instead offers three core functions:
Getting a list of accounts
Listing an account’s balance, including any money held in Monzo’s savings Pots
Listing an account’s transactions
They will not, however, have access to personal information such as a user’s name, date of birth or home address.
In the mean time, Monzo plans to begin work on a new Developer API which will make available “a much more comprehensive, complete API to developers and third parties”. This API will be able to access functionality like making payments, updating and creating feed items, and full access to a customer’s data and accounts.
Other goals for 2018 include joining the UK’s Current Account Switching Service (CASS), making its overdraft service available to more of its current users, and updating its savings Pots and visual spending graphs in-app.
Commenting on the announcement, Monzo engineer Simon Vans-Colina said: “We’re so excited to take the next step towards building a beautiful API and making it much more widely available.
“In the UK, we expect that a common API will become the standard, that all banks – from high street giants to challengers like Monzo – will be required by law to adopt.
“For so long banking has been dominated by just a few traditional players. If they work as intended, these rules could help more challengers enter the market, and make our products even more useful to customers.”
