Open banking is a modern concept wherein third parties are provided access to the customer: Commerce with Accounting Dissertation, NUI, Ireland

The research area chosen by me is the Impact of “Open banking on accounting”. Open banking is a modern concept wherein third parties are provided access to the customer data by the banks and financial institutions, in open banking, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are used to enable real-time communication of data between banks and trusted third parties.

It is an area of interest, as open banking along with providing various benefits to the customers, also will have a significant impact on the accounting profession. With the use of Open APIs, customers would be able to get access to their financial information on a real-time basis, without the accountant having to provide the consolidated information. The accounting profession would undergo a significant change, accountants can now act as advisors for the clients, advising them as to how the information being communicated by the open banking application can be used by the clients to take financial decisions.

Furthermore, open banking would also bring a high degree of automation in the accountant’s task, they no longer need to extract the account statements of various accounts and enter the transactions manually and they can simply extract the reports from the APIs and import them into the accounting software.

I will be interviewing the professionals working in the field of accounting to gain their perspective as to how open banking has changed the way they work and the kind of services that they provide to their clients. I will also be reviewing the literature on the topic to find the answers to the research questions finalized for the topic.