How product and engineering teams can prepare for open banking 

The open banking framework in Nigeria is set to go live in August following the Central Bank of Nigeria’s approval. 

It’ll fundamentally change how fintechs and banks exchange financial data, manage user authentication, consent, and design products. 

The teams that prepare for this switch will have a head start and have a significant advantage over the coming years. To prepare, you need to audit your current architecture, upskill your product and engineering teams on new security protocols, redesign data pipelines, and rethink how products handle user consent.

In this piece, I’ll provide a practical roadmap for engineering and product teams to do this and manage the transition successfully.

For engineering teams

The most significant shift for engineers will be authentication and authorisation. 

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Currently, most fintechs obtain financial data by asking users to hand over their bank login details and scraping data on their behalf. Other fintechs with strong personal networks integrate independently with different banks’ databases, which is not a long-term sustainable approach. 

With the rollout of open banking, you’ll be working with OAuth2-based flows, where users explicitly grant permission through secure redirects. 

Engineering teams must build or integrate robust token management systems, handling access tokens. Then, they have to refresh the tokens and scopes carefully to maintain seamless and secure user sessions.

Your backend systems will need upgrades, too. Consent management won’t be just a checkbox anymore; it’ll be an ongoing, auditable process. So your infrastructure must track which users gave permission for which data, when, and for how long. This consent logging is critical for compliance, user trust, and debugging.

Also, you’ll need to revisit data pipelines and processing logic. 

Because the data format will now be standardised across banks, your ingestion workflows can be simplified and automated, but only if you redesign them to consume and interpret these consistent schemas. This is a chance to reduce the custom mapping and transformation layers engineers have been patching together for years.

Engineers will also have to accommodate new data types that open banking exposes, such as direct debit mandates or real-time payment notifications. This may require updating your databases, revising event-driven architectures, or expanding data models to handle richer financial information.

Finally, your teams will need to embed monitoring and Service Level Agreement management into your API integrations since banks will be contractually obligated to maintain their endpoints. This means building alerting systems and fallback logic to handle outages or degraded performance gracefully.

For product teams

From a product perspective, open banking demands a mindset shift around user consent and transparency. You’ll have to redesign consent flows so that users fully understand what data they share with you and for what purpose. This isn’t a legal formality to hide in terms and conditions. It’s a big moment to build trust and educate users. Clear, intuitive UX around consent management (including easy ways to revoke access) will become a competitive advantage.

Product roadmaps will have to evolve because richer, real-time data becomes available. 

Features that were previously difficult to build, like real-time net-worth aggregation across multiple banks, instant credit scoring based on live transaction data, or automated savings plans that react to spending patterns, become feasible.

Product teams will also need to collaborate closely with engineering teams on API contract design and data requirements. Since the open banking API provides a standard blueprint, products can be more predictable and interoperable. However, this requires careful coordination early in the development cycle to ensure the API capabilities align with user needs and business goals.

Additionally, open banking allows fintechs to rethink business models and partnerships. Products can shift from isolated silos to interconnected financial ecosystems, integrating services like payment initiation, account aggregation, and personalized financial advice into seamless experiences.

How fintechs can prepare for open banking

Here’s a practical roadmap you can follow.

Audit your current architecture

Start with thorough stocktaking. 

Where are you currently pulling financial data from? Identify every integration point, whether a direct bank partnership, an aggregator like Mono or Okra, or a custom-built scraper..

Pay close attention to how you handle user credentials. Are you storing raw login details anywhere? How are you passing these credentials between services? This step is important because moving from credential-based access to tokenised OAuth flows means redesigning parts of your system that might have been built around less secure assumptions.

Also, document your data flow end-to-end. How does data move from the bank or aggregator, through your backend, into your databases, and finally to your product? This visibility will help highlight legacy technical debt and integration risks that open banking standards will expose.

Familiarise yourself with the Open Banking Nigeria standard

Open Banking Nigeria’s API specifications are publicly available and comprehensive. These aren’t just technical documents you skim once; your team needs to understand the data schemas, the authentication flows (especially OAuth2 with FAPI enhancements), consent models, and error handling guidelines.

Dig into the scope definitions: what kinds of data access are permitted, and how granular can permissions get? Understanding this will shape your product’s consent UX and engineering requirements.

Make it a team effort. Product managers, engineers, and compliance officers should all get comfortable with these standards early. This shared knowledge will reduce rework and help you spot opportunities for innovation within the framework.

Refactor your data ingestion and processing pipelines

If you still rely on patchwork solutions to clean and normalise bank data, now is the time to invest in a proper overhaul.

Open banking delivers standardised, well-structured data, which means your ingestion layer can be simplified, but only if you redesign it to leverage those standards. 

You’ll need to: 

• Build new parsers and validators aligned with the open banking schemas. Support real-time data streaming where available
• Enhance your storage model to accommodate richer data sets like direct debit mandates, payment initiation statuses, or multi-currency balances
• Design robust error handling for cases where banks fail to meet SLAs

Think of this as an opportunity to build a scalable, maintainable, and auditable ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) system specifically for financial data. This investment pays off in reduced engineering overhead and improved data reliability.

Upskill your engineering team on new protocols and security requirements

Open banking is a new paradigm. Your backend engineers must become fluent in OAuth2 and OpenID Connect, especially the Financial-grade API (FAPI) profiles that add necessary layers of security around authentication and authorisation. Understanding token lifecycles, scopes, refresh tokens, and secure storage is non-negotiable.

Beyond the protocol itself, engineers should learn how to implement robust consent logging, tracking every data access event with timestamps, user IDs, and consent scopes. This isn’t just for compliance; it’s important for customer trust and debugging.

Consider dedicated training sessions, bring in experts, or even pair junior engineers with those experienced in security and identity management. It’s better to start building muscle now rather than scrambling when open banking fully goes live in August.

Design for compliance, auditability, and data governance

User consent isn’t a checkbox or a one-time prompt; it’s a process that must be transparent, revocable, and auditable. This means working closely with your legal and information security teams to create policies and systems that meet NDPR (Nigeria Data Protection Regulation) and CBN’s open banking guidelines.

Your systems must record who consented to what data sharing, when, and for how long. It’s also important to implement workflows that let users easily revoke consent and ensure your backend respects those revocations immediately.

You’ll also need to revisit your data retention policies. How long do you keep user data? How do you securely dispose of it? These questions have legal, ethical, and operational consequences.

Engage actively with the open banking ecosystem

Open banking in Nigeria is still unfolding. This is not a “set and forget” moment.

Participate in industry working groups, pilot programs, and forums such as those hosted by Open Banking Nigeria. Engage with regulators, banks, fellow fintechs, and technology providers. This involvement will give your team early insight into upcoming changes, implementation challenges, and best practices.

Being part of the conversation also means your company can influence the development of the framework, helping shape standards, security policies, and operational norms that align with your product’s needs.

Finally, these networks can become valuable sources of partnership and collaboration, opening doors to new business opportunities as the ecosystem matures.

Conclusion

Now is the time to rethink how your systems work. 

Stop relying on quick fixes; build secure, standardised, and maintainable integrations. 

Open banking is coming. Are you prepared to make the necessary changes and adapt to this new environment?

Author

This article was written by Chigozie Madubuko is a Lead Backend Engineer at Kora, where he helps build secure, scalable financial solutions. He specialises in designing high-performance systems that power seamless financial transactions and integrations. Chigozie has played a key role in shaping Open Banking API standards in Nigeria, working alongside industry leaders to drive financial access across Nigeria.