Why Zambia Needs Open Banking APIs: Unlocking the Next Wave of Economic Activity

The real value of open banking is not the technology itself, but the businesses and opportunities that can be built on top of it.

According to the Bank of Zambia, the country’s payment systems processed more than five billion transactions in 2025. This shows just how much financial activity is already taking place digitally.

But there is an opportunity we have yet to fully unlock: allowing businesses and individuals to securely use their financial information across different services, regardless of which bank they use.

This is where open banking APIs come in.

What exactly is open banking?

Imagine you’re a software developer in Zambia and want to build an application that helps small businesses manage their finances.

Your application needs to connect to Zanaco, Absa, FNB, Stanbic and other banks to retrieve account balances and transaction histories.

Today, doing this at scale can mean negotiating separate partnerships, meeting different technical requirements and building different integrations for each institution.

Open banking changes that.

Through a common set of technical standards called Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), authorised applications can securely access permitted financial information with the customer’s consent.

Instead of every developer building a different connection for every bank, participating institutions follow common standards.

Importantly, this does not mean making banking information public. Customers choose who can access their information, what can be accessed and for how long.

Nor does it necessarily mean building one government-owned API. Banks can maintain their own systems while adopting common interfaces and rules.

1. New businesses

Common banking APIs would make it easier for developers to build accounting tools, payment services and financial management applications. These businesses could generate revenue through subscriptions and services, creating jobs in tech, finance, compliance and customer support.

2. Better access to finance for SMEs

Imagine a furniture manufacturer in Lusaka that needs working capital to fulfil a large order. It has regular sales and needs to organize their payments trail.

With open banking, the business could authorise a lender to review its transaction history and assess its cash flow. This could reduce paperwork and support a better-informed lending decision.

It does not guarantee loan approval. But suitable financing could help the business buy materials, increase production and employ more workers.

3. Lower operating costs

Businesses could automatically bring transactions from different banks into their accounting systems, match payments against invoices and monitor cash flow. Less manual administration means more time and resources for customers, production and growth.

4. New opportunities for banks

Banks could reach customers through approved accounting platforms, business applications and other fintech services, rather than developing every solution themselves. These partnerships could create new distribution channels, products and revenue opportunities while giving customers more choice.

Lets not forget mobile money must be part of the conversation

In Zambia, limiting this initiative to traditional banks would overlook an important part of our financial system.

Many individuals and small businesses use mobile money for their everyday transactions.

A broader open-finance framework, which Zambia is already exploring, could eventually include mobile-money providers alongside banks and other regulated financial institutions.

A business should ideally be able to view its permitted bank and mobile-money records through one application.

This is particularly relevant to businesses whose financial activity is spread across several providers.

Zambia already has the National Financial Switch, which supports interoperability between payment providers. However, payment interoperability and open banking are different things.

The National Financial Switch helps move payments between institutions. Open banking allows customers to securely authorise access to financial information and, where supported, initiate payments through approved services.

Both forms of infrastructure can complement each other.

What has Zambia done so far?

We are not starting from zero.

The Bank of Zambia conducted an open-finance feasibility and readiness assessment in 2024, approved an implementation plan in 2025 and published its Position Paper on Open Finance in Zambia in June 2026.

These are important steps.

However, publishing a regulatory framework and making standardised, usable APIs available to developers are two different milestones.

Countries such as the United Kingdom began implementing regulated open banking in 2018, while Brazil began its phased implementation in 2021.

Zambia has the advantage of learning from these experiences rather than developing everything from scratch.

The question is how quickly we can translate the work already underway into practical infrastructure that financial institutions, businesses and developers can use.

Who needs to be involved?

This cannot be achieved by software developers alone, and it should not be left entirely to commercial banks.

The Bank of Zambia should remain central to establishing the regulatory framework, participation requirements, security standards and implementation roadmap. It has already begun this work.

Commercial banks and the Bankers Association of Zambia need to participate in developing common standards, making approved services accessible through APIs and supporting secure integrations.

Mobile-money providers should be included in the broader open-finance discussions to ensure the framework reflects how Zambians actually transact.

The Zambia Electronic Clearing House, which operates the National Financial Switch, could provide valuable technical and infrastructure expertise, particularly where payment interoperability is concerned.

The Data Protection Commission must help ensure that customers maintain control over their information, with clear rules on consent, privacy, security and accountability.

The Ministry of Finance and National Planning and the Ministry of Technology and Science can help align this initiative with Zambia’s economic development and digital transformation priorities.

Finally, developers, fintech companies, investors, SMEs and consumer representatives must have a seat at the table.

These are the people who will build, finance and use the products that make the infrastructure economically valuable.

What should happen next?

I believe the next step should be a clear, publicly accessible implementation roadmap that moves beyond policy development.

This could begin with common API specifications for account information, balances and transaction histories.

Participating institutions could provide secure testing environments where approved developers can experiment without accessing real customer information.

A supervised pilot involving willing banks, mobile-money providers and local fintech companies could then test real-world use cases with consenting customers.

The framework would also need clear rules for authorisation, data security, access pricing, customer consent, revocation and dispute resolution.

The success of such an initiative should not be measured simply by how many APIs are published. It should be measured by whether businesses can use them reliably, whether new services emerge and whether customers experience meaningful benefits.

How this connects to the Grow Zambia agenda

The Grow Zambia agenda places emphasis on increasing production, expanding private-sector participation, supporting SMEs and creating employment across sectors such as agriculture, mining, manufacturing, tourism and energy.

Open banking could support these objectives by making financial services easier to integrate into the businesses operating within these sectors.

It will not directly produce more maize, manufacture more goods or create new mines.

But it could help the businesses doing those things manage money more efficiently, demonstrate their financial activity, access suitable financing and connect to new services.

That is the connection between financial infrastructure and economic growth.

Final thoughts

We often discuss economic development in terms of the industries and businesses we want to create.

But we should also ask whether we are building the infrastructure that makes those businesses easier to start and grow.

Open banking is one example.

Zambia does not need to predict every financial technology business that might emerge. It needs to create the conditions that allow those businesses to emerge.

And that is why accelerating open banking and open finance deserves greater attention.