Komerční banka Brings a New Generation of Open Banking without Borders

Press release

1/18/2021
10:00 AM

Komerční banka has launched a new generation of the Open Banking portal, whereby it continues in its transformation into an open digital platform. The objective is to bring the best combinations of the bank’s and its partners’ products and services to all KB clients. KB is unique in the market by its approach that offers the best from combinations of both of the Bank-as-a-Platform and Bank-as-a-Service innovative trends, moreover extended by the Banking Identity services. Thanks to that and also its as many as 18 API services, KB is the Open Banking leader in the Czech market.

KB’s first API portal, launched more than a year ago, has given its partners a unique opportunity to use and co-create KB API services. For developers of innovative services, we have opened access to a stable environment for testing and debugging their apps that use the features of our API services. The portal also opens easy access to API services across Société Générale Group. KB’s innovative approach to API services has also won the absolute primacy within the SG Group – new and innovative products constituting a significant business potential for interconnected partners. API services definitely are not the technology only.

KB teams have co-created the portal for the new generation of Open Banking without Borders directly with its future users employing combinations of agile approaches and Design Thinking. First of all, we organised brainstorming interviews with people from business and developers to gauge their expectations of the portal and to find from them how we could move the current situation forward. On these foundations, we started to build prototypes and tested them with these users repeatedly from the perspective of content, understand ability, and usability. These steps confirmed the way in which different groups of users wanted to work with the portal and showed what still had to be adjusted or changed.

Now, the portal is available in the public domain and can pursue its mission: “We will continue to actively support the growth of the digital ecosystem of KB’s Open Banking and inspire our partners and other banks in openness, cooperation, and innovations for our clients,” says David Barczi, Digital Channels Manager at KB.

A breakthrough innovation is the partners’ section called Your Services in KB and offering KB’s open digital banking platform primarily to FinTech and StartUp partners. It shows an easy way to becoming a FinTech partner for Komerční banka, the specific benefits thereof, and the procedure for interconnecting and testing. Our way towards clients’ perfect experience is agile and continuous improvements in this area as well. Representatives of some of the FinTechs involved are sharing their experience of working with KB. You can also see some specific examples of their services in the KB ecosystem. 

Going forward, KB’s clients and partners can look forward to a FinTech blog, Banking Identity and, naturally, the forthcoming hot news in the areas of KB API, innovative partners’ services, and KB Multibanking. In addition, we continue to work on further uninterrupted improvements of the portal. “We actively listen to our clients and co-create our innovative digital services with them; we will also welcome your feedback, for example at api@kb.cz,” adds David Barczi.

Thus, online and mobile banking is increasingly becoming clients’ secure portal to other than purely financial services.

You can find all information about KB’s Open banking and API at www.kb.cz/openbanking.

Pavel Zúbek
KB Communication
mob.: +420 725 420 107
pavel_zubek@kb.cz