It was announced on Monday that API3 has entered a 10-year partnership with the Open Bank Project for development and integration of over 400 banking APIs with blockchain smart contracts, Web 3.0 applications, and decentralized finance (DeFi).
This move could potentially, in the near future, provide bank customers with easy access to online smart contracts. Which provides financial services with high returns, keeping the fact it is also high risk.
In the past, the fintech revolution relied on frameworks like the Open Bank Project to allow banks to securely share their valuable data with third-party innovators. Such data includes account information on payment transaction requests of Know Your Customer (KYC) service.
The API3 Airnode infrastructure does nearly the same that Chainlink is doing in the DeFi space; adding blockchains and decentralized applications to the fintech connection of Web 2.0 and mobile applications using Open Bank.
API3 is mostly focused on Ethereum-based blockchains, including scaling solutions like Polygon and enterprise versions of the public network, in addition the startup works with platforms such as Polkadot.
Banks are often slow due to their bureaucracy, although they have important powers, and the partnership with API3 will create a bridge between banks and the DeFi world.