Interfaces

At finAPI, we are currently working with 3 different types of interfaces: XS2A, FINTS SERVER, and WEB SCRAPER.

If you are using finAPI’s Web Form 2.0 - the interface selection will be taken care of by the Web Form itself.

If you use the older version of the Web Form or you do not use the Web Form at all, then you would need to indicate the interface when importing a bank connection.

To know which bank support which interface(s), please use Get and search all banks service.

CODE

GET /banks

This end-point can also be used to retrieve the bankId when importing a bank connection.

1. XS2A

finAPI will connect to the banks over the XS2A API, which is PSD2 compliant. XS2A interface will, for most banks, have the limitation to return data only for payment accounts (i.e. checking accounts, and, in rare cases, certain credit cards).

2. FINTS SERVER

FinTS stands for Financial Transaction Services and is a further development of the HBCI standard (HBCI is an acronym for Home Banking Computer Interface. This interface is publicly available and independent of banks and providers. Through standardized transfer protocols, message formats, and security measures, it enables home banking and mobile banking. Therefore, banks that support HBCI can be integrated into every banking app). Several banks have joined together to facilitate online banking and multi-banking.

Via the FINTS SERVER interface, finAPI can work with not only payment accounts, but also many other types of accounts, including but not limited to savings accounts and loan accounts.

It is also worth noting that once a bank has passed the market probation phase, downloading payment accounts and conducting payment initiation is by law not allowed anymore via the FINTS SERVER interface.

3. WEB SCRAPER

Web scraping (or data scraping) is a technique used to collect content and data from the internet. We only use this interface under several circumstances:

when the other two interfaces are not an option for a bank
when neither of such two interfaces returns the required account type. In most cases, this will be credit cards and security accounts.