Our collective vision at the API Centre has always been to see innovative new and enhanced products and services in the New Zealand market that have been enabled by standardised APIs. Today, we’re pleased to be taking another significant step towards that vision with the release of our new Customer Experience Guidelines.
These guidelines will help support organisations planning to use our v2.0 API standards to build real-world customer solutions. They are adapted from the UK Open Banking Implementation Entity’s Customer Experience Guidelines and recommend best practice for Standards Users so their customers are made aware of and are fully in control of the use of their data each step of the way. This means ensuring customers are clearly informed about the consent they are providing, and what service they will receive in return.
Our philosophy when developing these guidelines has been to create a comprehensive written and visual guide for our Standards Users (both API Providers and Third Parties) that follow international best practice and is also tailored to our local market and conditions.
The guidelines directly address the real-world customer journey between Third Party and API Provider interactions, from the establishment and authentication of consumer identity, through to payment authorisation. They provide a starting point for our Standards Users to create their own customer experience across products and services that have been built to our API standards.
Fundamental principles
Some fundamental principles of what good customer interactions should look like were defined when developing the guidelines. They are:
- Control: enabling customers to understand and take ownership of the decisions made through this process and that this is something that they are choosing and in charge of.
- Speed: should be appropriate to the customer and the journey they are undertaking. Convenient, speedy and intuitive design is a question of execution and interaction.
- Transparency: providing progressive levels of information in plain language that inform and support customer decisions.
- Security: providing explicit clarity and reassurance in relation to data definition, use, security and customer protections.
- Trust: the principles of control, speed, transparency and security combine to create a trusted environment for the customer. Standards Users need to consider, create and promote values of trust through every part of their API Standard customer journeys, to foster understanding, acceptance and adoption of new innovative products and services.
See the ‘Standards’ section of this website to download our Customer Experience Guidelines.
Get involved with the centre
If you would like to find out more about our API standards or get involved with our work with the industry, there are two ways you can join the API Centre. You can apply to become a fully-fledged Standards User, or if you’re not quite ready to take that step, then join as a Community Contributor. The registration fee for being a Community Contributor is now free for the first 12 months* and you’ll get access to our sandbox, powered by Middleware NZ, to test your innovation against our API standards. Find out more about how to join.
*T&Cs apply.