The OpenID Foundation (OIDF) and our development partner, the UK Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE), recently hosted a workshop focused on Financial-grade API (FAPI) conformance and certification. It was a deep dive into the technical interface of our open, global standard with the OBIE’s functional UK standard. Our success metrics: over 125 active participants, a high level of engagement, little audience drop-off and high quality of feedback throughout the workshop. Participants were primarily standard-based developers from ASPSPs, TPPs and vendors (TSPs) supporting the UK OBIE Standard as well as technology experts from a range of international venues. The workshop updated participants on the latest developments in both the OIDF FAPI profile and the OBIE Standard:

• Demonstrated the respective conformance tools and the benefits of certification
• Provided participants with help and support in using these tools
• Encouraged a greater number of certifications
• Ultimately to help grow the open banking ecosystem, enhancing security and benefits for participants and end customers

OpenID Foundation Chairman, Nat Sakimura, presented a detailed overview of the Foundation history and its contribution to the global identity community. Nat also presented the current status of the FAPI profile and concluded with a call to action for participants to consider joining the Foundation and getting involved in the important work in the FAPI working group as well as other working groups including eKYC-IDA and MODRNA. Chairman Sakimura then handed off to Daniel Fett with OIDF member yes.com, an active contributor to the FAPI and informal liaison to the HEART working group. Daniel’s presentation on FAPI 2.0 highlighted the profile’s security / defense-in-depth, on-the-wire protocol interoperability, and features for complex and concurrent consents. Daniel concluded with an update on CIBA and future planned updates. Joseph Hennan, a leader on the OIDF Certification team, presented an update on FAPI conformance testing and certification. Joseph followed his presentation by providing a demo of the OIDF conformance test suite with a focus on FAPI conformance and certification. Joseph demo included the updated RP tests while addressing questions about app-app tests. Chris Michael, CTO of OBIE, lead discussions with Freddi Gyara providing a comprehensive overview of the OBIE Read/Write API that was followed by Julian Coombs and Glyn Jackson providing a demonstration of the OBIE conformance tool. Together with Chris Michael, we called on participants to action to join the Foundation, get involved in working groups and ensuring their implementations of FAPI are conforming and certified. The workshop can be viewed in its entirety here. Content from this workshop as well as other similar workshops being planned with other OIDF liaison partners will continue to contribute to the ongoing development of the Foundation’s FAPI microsite focused on global open banking initiatives and providing resources for fintech developers implementing the FAPI profile. Launched in December 2019, the microsite was an investment by the Foundation to provide global open banking developers a one-stop-shop of educational resources free of charge to anyone at any time for how OAuth, OpenID and FAPI specifications work together. Please be on the lookout for more OpenID Foundation workshops in partnership with liaison partners, like the Financial Data Exchange to be shared on the OIDF website in the coming weeks.   Don Thibeau OpenID Foundation Executive Director