CSIRO’s Data Standards Body has welcomed the live use of banking Product Reference Data standards.

The Federal Government’s Consumer Data Right (CDR) regime, which will give Australians greater control over their own data, is one step closer with the API-based publication of banking Product Reference Data on 1 July 2019, developed using CDR standards.

The CDR standards, developed in consultation with the CDR community by CSIRO’s Data61 as the Technical Advisor to the Data Standards Body (DSB) and overseen by the ACCC and the Data Standards Body, form the basis of the standardised approach to this release.

Three banks, ANZ, The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) and Westpac have now publicly released their Product Reference Data through application programming interfaces (APIs) encompassing the initial four product categories covered by the Consumer Data Right (CDR) regime. This is a voluntary release by the banks whilst legislation is considered by Parliament.

The product categories covered include:

  • Transaction accounts
  • Term deposits
  • Credit card accounts; and
  • Debit card accounts.

The Product Reference Data covered is general product data and does not include any personal customer information. Specific customer information will only ever be transferred under the CDR regime with the explicit consent of customers and only to ACCC accredited third parties.

It should be noted the API links allow the Product Reference Data to be automatically accessed in a machine readable form for efficient software enabled evaluation.

Other partners and fintech development teams will use this format to translate the bank data into consumer readable formats as part of a broader service they offer to consumers.

The Data Standards Body will continue to work with the banks, fintech community, consumer groups and ACCC over the next few months to review and assess the consistency of data available through the API links and adjust the standards as necessary to ensure there is easy and consistent access to product data.