Digital challenger bank Monzo has announced that it will not be spending much time on its public API this year, as it focuses on the launch of its current account service.

The existing API will remain available to developers, but the bank will not be expanding the scope of the APIs or allow developers to publish their applications. According to Monzo, there are over 2,000 people connected through the developers’ Slack channel, while almost 100 personal projects are also integrated with the API.

Monzo is not yet allowing developers to build public applications on top of the existing API for three reasons: Firstly, Monzo’s initial prototype was full of “leaky abstractions that don’t work well for current accounts”; It does not want other companies to rely on a product that the bank cannot afford to support, citing difficulties with company integrations; and the introduction of PSD2 next year, which is likely to hugely change how banking APIs can be used.

In a blog post, Jonas Huckestein, co-founder and chief technology officer of Monzo, said: “All of this means that it’s unlikely we’ll have a full featured public API for at least the first few months after we launch current accounts. We do not plan to add further functionality, such as payments before the end of the year.

“Long term, absolutely nothing has changed. We are still fully committed to our long-term strategy of building a banking platform that developers can easily integrate with. At some point next year, we hope to launch a public bank API and developer tools we are truly proud of.”

Share Story: