The National Bank of Georgia, partnered with the International Finance Corporation (IFC), is pleased to announce a technical sandbox, which is expected to develop Open Banking and enhance its benefits for consumers.

Technical sandbox provides an opportunity to test services using Application Programming Interfaces (API), used to create innovative financial products in a real test environment. The sandbox will be launched on the Open Banking platform of the TESOBE international company, which provides access to the catalog of 400 banking APIs and localized test data, along with the opportunity to communicate with over 11,000 fintech developers.

The National Bank of Georgia and the IFC will give participants a chance to study capabilities of two pre-selected Open Banking APIs in a test environment and use them to try to create innovative and interesting financial products for consumers.

The estimated duration of the project is 22 weeks. The NBG together with the IFC will decide on APIs selected for the technical sandbox within 3 weeks after the launch of the project. Any interested party will have the opportunity to contact the Open Banking team at ob@nbg.gov.ge  or the Innovations Office at innovationoffice@nbg.gov.ge. Detailed information regarding the acceptance of applications will be published on the website of the National Bank of Georgia.

The APIs selected will be included in a 6-week testing period to begin after the completion of the preparatory stage. Based on the results of the testing, if the new services are deemed interesting and of significant benefit to the consumers, they will be added to the standard of Open Banking of Georgia and will become available in the real environment for those involved in Open Banking.

Interested parties have the opportunity to participate in selecting test APIs by sending an e-mail about the interfaces they are interested in to ob@nbg.gov.ge. An information meeting to select the APIs to be tested will be held on May 25 of this year at the head office of the National Bank of Georgia. Those wishing to attend may email: ob@nbg.gov.ge.