ACCC introduces CDR developer portal

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has introduced a new consumer data right (CDR) portal aimed at guiding participants through the ecosystem's technical requirements.

The portal was introduced partly “to address gaps in guidance” within the CDR environment, according to an ACCC spokesperson.

“The developer portal is a key component of the participant education & tooling strategy initiated by the ACCC," the spokesperson said.

“This strategy involves a comprehensive effort and ongoing investment to assist CDR participants in understanding the technical requirements of the CDR ecosystem and in developing and maintaining solutions that can operate effectively within it.”

The spokesperson added the ACCC had conducted a survey in mid-2022 “to better grasp the guidance needs of CDR participants”, finding “participants would benefit from clearer guidance.”

“The developer portal was created to address these gaps in guidance, specifically focusing on: implementation guidance related to the register APIs, roadmap for register API changes [and] overview of known and resolved issues related to the register APIs”.

The new developer portal is separate to the CDR sandbox created to assist participants to stand up and test the readiness of their systems for open banking.

“The CDR Sandbox and CDR Mock Solutions are developer tools or reference implementations while the developer portal serves as a detailed documentation platform,” the spokesperson said.

“Reference implementations allow developers to reverse engineer and learn from code examples for the range of requirements within the standards.

“This reduces the amount of interpretation required and provides a code which developers can leverage, instead of reinventing the wheel and re-interpreting the associated standards."

Meanwhile the developer portal “complements the reference implementations to support developers who make use of the systems operated and maintained by the ACCC," the spokesperson said.

It was also announced the ACCC has kicked off one of its regular CDR audit processes “in June and are presently assessing the information and documents provided by audited participants.”

The audit summary is expected to be published later this year and helps identify compliance issues and areas where further guidance may be needed.

In 2022, ING Bank had to pay the ACCC $53,280 in penalties for alleged missing deadlines related to the CDR, citing commitment delays “mostly due to an unforeseen technical compatibility issue.”

At the time, the ACCC claimed ING Bank missed three deadlines and misled consumers through a website statement about the reliability and security of its CDR service.

In 2021 iTnews found nearly one in three Australian mid-tier credit unions, building societies and other institutions weren’t open banking and CDR compliant, while others were compliant on paper but had systems that did not actually work.

One issue highlighted at the time was the technical challenges with implementing Australia’s complex open banking regime were identified as key challenges, alongside resourcing capacities.