SINGAPORE, Dec. 8, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Brankas, Southeast Asia‘s leading Open Finance technology company, announced today that it was awarded the Monetary Authority of Singapore‘s Financial Sector Technology and Innovation (FSTI) Proof of Concept (POC) grant on 11 November 2021. The MAS FSTI POC grant provides funding support for experimentation, development, and dissemination of nascent innovative technologies in the financial services sector.

APIX Open Core is an open-source core banking system based on APIX platform. APIX was set up by AFIN (ASEAN Financial Innovation Network) in 2018 as the world’s first cross-border, open-architecture API marketplace for collaboration between fintech and financial institutions. With APIX, participants can integrate and test solutions in a sandbox environment via a cloud-based architecture.

Disrupting the banking status quo

The APIX Open Core is being developed by Brankas for traditional and digital banks, non-bank financial institutions (NBFI), fintech, and cooperatives in emerging markets. With funding support from the FSTI POC grant, Brankas aims to further APIX Open Core to enable rapid financial product development. It aims to do so by removing licensing costs, providing easy integration with third-party services, and ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements.

“APIX Open Core is designed to disrupt the banking status quo. The aim is to solve current barriers to entry in the banking sector. For instance, commercial CBS from established players tends to be very costly, restricting banks to a closed environment that allows minimal integration and customizability,” said Mike Dickinson, Chief Product Officer of Brankas.

“On the other hand, available open-source CBS in the market are often rudimentary, inflexible, and lacking technical support. Brankas’ APIX Open Core addresses the concerns of traditional banks, digital banks, and other FIs by offering an affordable and reliable solution for these institutions looking to compete in the digital age,” he added.

APIX Open Core’s currently contain eight modules targeted for retail banking, including Customer Onboarding, Account Management, General Ledger, Savings/Wallets and Time Deposits, Regulatory Reporting, Retail, and SME Loan Booking, Payment and External Settlements, as well as Risk, Fraud, and AML Management. It is also designed to allow seamless integration with external fintech partners, the bank’s mobile or web apps, and external card or payment networks.

Driving the growth of purposeful technology in the financial sector

The development of APIX Open Core will give financial institutions, and fintech companies access to a new CBS that is easy to customize, has no license fee, and designed for integration with other information systems and Open API ready. In Singapore, where the technology will be developed and deployed first, local fintech companies will benefit from a faster and smoother entry into new markets as adoption of the APIX Open Core expands across ASEAN, while the local software engineering community can directly contribute to a “homegrown” open source project that helps to narrow a persisting gap in the region’s financial services infrastructure.

Financial inclusion continues to be a work in progress in Southeast Asia due to a lack of access to financial products and services. More than 70 percent of the population in the region remain unbanked or underbanked, with credit card penetration as low as 3% for emerging countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines. Open-source solutions such as APIX Open Core allows financial institutions to deliver a complete range of financial services needed to ensure inclusion.

Financial service providers in Southeast Asia interested in adopting APIX Open Core, the open source CBS being developed by Brankas, can be a part of APIX Open Core testing by contacting Brankas here.

Learn more about how Brankas empowers open finance adoption in the region, and get involved with our initiatives here.

About Brankas

Founded in 2016, Brankas is the leading Open Finance technology company in Southeast Asia. We provide API-based solutions, data, and payments solutions for financial service providers (like banks, lenders, and e-wallets) and online businesses. Brankas partners with banks to build and manage their Open Finance infrastructure, producing APIs for real-time payments, identity and data, new account opening, remittances, and more. With Brankas’ secure Open Banking technology, online businesses, fintech companies, and digital banks can use Brankas APIs to create new digital experiences for their users.