What is Open Banking?
Open Banking enables you to securely share information with licensed third party providers so you can take advantage of a range of services designed to make banking better. Open Banking came into effect for HSBC Bahrain on 27 August 2020.
With Open Banking you can:
- See all of your accounts in one place - even if they're with different banks
- Make payments more easily
- Use product comparison sites to compare your account with others
- Use third-party budgeting tools
Sharing your account information securely
Third party providers will need your consent to access your accounts. It’s important you understand the services they’re providing and how they’ll use your data.
Application Programming Interface (API) based access
In order to provide services like displaying all your accounts in one app, a third party provider will access your account using an Application Programming Interface or API.
Before doing so, they’ll ask for your consent and you’ll be securely redirected to HSBC's authentication process. This will be similar to the way you log on to online banking.
Once authenticated, you can select the accounts you want to share. The third party provider will ask for consent to access your account data either as a one-off, or for a longer period of time. If you want to give consent for an extended period, you will need to refresh the access every 90 days through our online authentication process.
By signing up to the third party provider’s services, you are agreeing to their terms and conditions on their websites and apps, as well as HSBC's third party provider terms.
Third party providers are only legally permitted to access the information for accounts that you have given consent to. This includes the account summary, payee information and balance data. All third parties that access your information must comply with data protection laws and must be registered or authorised with the Central Bank of Bahrain.
If you’re concerned about the data you’ve shared and feel it may have been used incorrectly, contact the organisation or third party provider immediately.
Making payments with Open Banking
API-based payments
The third party provider will ask for your consent and you’ll be redirected to HSBC for authentication, much like when sharing your account information.
Third party providers can ask you for the account number of where the payment will come from, or you can select this after the authentication process when you are confirming payment.
When the process is complete we’ll send the requested information to the third party provider, or make the payment as detailed in our Personal Banking Terms and Conditions. If you think a payment may have been unauthorised or incorrect please contact us immediately by calling on the number on the back of your card. If you have received any suspicious calls, emails or texts from anyone impersonating HSBC, please contact us.
HSBC developer portal
Third Party Service Providers (TPPs) in Bahrain can create an account on the HSBC developer portal to explore our Open Banking APIs, test them in our sandbox, and to access the latest documentation and services for our Open Banking products, including our TPP Implementation Guides.
You can also get in touch with our support team here, if you need help or have a suggestion on how we can improve our services.
Need more information?
Depending on the circumstances, you can contact us, or a third party provider directly, if you experience any of the following:
- a technical problem making payments
- a payment being taken from your account that you (or another account holder) didn’t request or authorise.
- a service issue
At HSBC, your opinion matters. Should you have a complaint about the service you have received from HSBC, please visit our complaints and feedback page.