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25/06/2026 12:50 am
TL;DR: Open banking in North and South American financial services is accelerating API-first customer experiences, but the real dependency is financial-grade APIs interacting with enterprise IAM standards, according to Ping Identity. The governance challenge is not just customer experience, but whether identity and access controls can keep pace with standards-based data sharing and trust relationships.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Ping Identity: Open banking is rapidly becoming a critical plank of digital innovation in financial services
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should IAM teams govern access in open banking environments?
A: IAM teams should govern open banking as a multi-party access problem, not a simple login problem.
Q: Why do financial-grade APIs matter for identity governance?
A: Financial-grade APIs matter because they raise the assurance required for regulated data sharing and make identity decisions part of the trust model.
Q: What do security teams get wrong about API-first banking?
A: They often focus on integration speed and customer experience while underestimating the number of identities involved in each access path.
Practitioner guidance
- Map API trust to identity controls Inventory which financial-grade API flows depend on customer identity, application identity, and service credentials, then map each flow to the controlling IAM policy and revocation path.
- Separate consent from authentication governance Treat user authentication, consent capture, and delegated authorisation as distinct control points so that access decisions can be reviewed and revoked independently.
- Review token and client credential lifecycle Check whether API tokens, client secrets, and certificates are rotated, scoped, and retired on a schedule that matches partner and customer relationship changes.
What's in the full article
Ping Identity's full article covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- Standards references and implementation context for financial-grade APIs in banking environments
- The specific customer-experience trends the vendor says are reshaping financial services
- How API-first design changes the relationship between trust, personalisation, and identity control
- The vendor's view of how incumbent banks can use underlying investments to compete
👉 Read Ping Identity's analysis of open banking, financial-grade APIs, and IAM →
Open banking and financial-grade APIs: what IAM teams need to know?
Explore further
25/06/2026 9:52 am
Open banking turns identity into a financial infrastructure control, not just a login mechanism. As banks expose services through APIs, identity decisions move into the path of product delivery, partner connectivity, and customer monetisation. That means IAM is no longer a supporting function around the channel, but a core part of how financial institutions prove trust and control access. Practitioners should treat this as an architectural shift, not a channel feature.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 90% of IT leaders say properly managing NHIs is essential for a successful zero-trust implementation, according to Ultimate Guide to NHIs.
- Only 20% have formal processes for offboarding and revoking API keys, and even fewer have procedures for rotating them.
A question worth separating out:
Q: What is the difference between customer login controls and API access governance?
A: Customer login controls prove that a person authenticated, while API access governance controls what that identity or delegated application can do next. In open banking, the second problem is broader because access may continue through tokens, scopes, and partner integrations after the login event ends. Teams need both layers, but they are not the same control.
👉 Read our full editorial: Open banking is exposing the limits of legacy IAM controls
