Operational Guidelines
1. Version Control
Version | Date | Description of Changes |
Bahrain OBF v1.0.0 | 28th Oct 2020 | Initial Release |
2. Overview
The Operational Guidelines set out criteria, guidance and requirements for Account Servicing Payment Service Providers (“ASPSPs”) to deliver an effective Open Banking ecosystem and meet the needs of Account Information Service Providers (“AISPs”) and Payment Initiation Service Providers (“PISPs”) in providing services to users/customers.
These guidelines provide recommended benchmarks to support ASPSPs in complying with Open Banking guidelines and help track availability and performance of data generating APIs. On adoption of the Operational Guidelines, ASPSPs will be in a better position to successfully demonstrate the availability and performance of APIs and their active interactions with AISPs and PISPs in the market.
The Operational Guidelines have the following objectives:
To provide clarity to ASPSPs to enable them to design effective and high-performing dedicated interfaces while fulfilling their regulatory obligations
To ensure that AISPs and PISPs have access to consistently well-designed, well-functioning and high performing dedicated interfaces
To provide the CBB with insights into the availability and performance of key ecosystem APIs and identify issues which may impact adoption and experience
In addition, adherence to these Operational Guidelines will provide the following benefits:
Improve efficiencies: Minimize the potential impact to a business when systems or supporting networks are down (including instances where they have not been tested appropriately)
Reduce Reputational Risk: Protect the reputation of ASPSPs/AISPs/PISPs and the Open Banking ecosystem as a whole
3. Availability and Performance
This section outlines various API availability and performance requirements and recommendations for ASPSPs in Bahrain. AISPs and PISPs are dependent on the well-established interfaces provided by ASPSPs so that they can in turn provide reliable services to their users/customers.
3.1 Key Indicators for Availability and Performance
The following tables set out, for each requirement:
Guidelines to explain how these should be calculated by ASPSPs for the dedicated interface
A recommended benchmark for the dedicated interface on the basis of global best practices
ASPSPs should ensure that the APIs/dedicated interfaces offered to AISPs/PISPs should at all times have the same level of availability and performance as the interfaces made available to the users/customers via the ASPSPs online environment.
For an effective Open Banking ecosystem to thrive, there is a need for industry-wide benchmarks, referred to as the "Recommended Benchmarks". Since these guidelines are based on global best practices, these will be reviewed on a regular basis in consultation with industry stakeholders. ASPSPs should refer to the recommended best practices for their interfaces.
Additionally, the guiding principle of these benchmarks is that ASPSPs must ensure (at least) parity between the availability and performance of the best performing interface (that they own and maintain to interact directly with customers) and that of their Open Banking interface which may be leveraged by AISP/PISPs.
3.1.1 Availability
The definition of a period of availability is a period of time when any of the API end points defined in the Bahrain Open Banking Framework (Bahrain OBF) are able to reliably provide a successful response to an appropriately constructed request.
AISPs/PISPs may consider that an API is only available if it is responding to all valid AISP/PISP requests:
Without error messages
That have received a successful response from the ASPSP, for example returning the data required to be provided to AISPs
This section sets out a minimum of two KPIs for availability that an ASPSP should have in place for each API. The following table explains these KPIs in detail and provides guidance on how they should be calculated. (The downtime mentioned is set for initial implementation of Bahrain OBF and may be revised on periodic basis).
Table 1 – Key Indicators based on best practices for Availability
Title | Requirement | Calculation Guidelines | Recommended Benchmark |
The uptime per day of all interfaces | For the purpose of calculating the availability indicators, the ASPSP should:
| For each 24 hour period, uptime is calculated as 100% minus the total percentage downtime in that period. | A quarterly uptime of 99.5%[1] |
The downtime per day of all interfaces | For the purpose of calculating the availability indicators, the ASPSP should: a) Calculate the percentage downtime using the total number of seconds the API was down in a 24 hour period, starting and ending at midnight
b) Count the interface as ‘down’ when five consecutive requests for access to information for the provision of payment initiation services, account information services are not replied to within a total timeframe of 30 seconds, irrespective of whether these requests originate from one or multiple PISPs/AISPs. In such a case, the ASPSP should calculate downtime from the moment it has received the first request in the series of five consecutive requests that were not replied to within 30 seconds, provided that there is no successful request in between those five requests to which a reply has been provided | Downtime should be calculated as follows:
At a minimum, downtime should be measured if:
This should include any vendor/supplier failures in the case where the ASPSP has contracted the vendor/supplier to deliver a related service. However, this should exclude errors resulting from issues not directly attributable to the ASPSP, such as issues with AISP/PISP software, infrastructure or connectivity. | A quarterly downtime of 0.5%. (approx. 11 hours per quarter, or just under four hours per month, to allow for planned releases, updates, and also any unplanned downtime). |
[1] This is the benchmark for business as usual/normal conditions and not in cases of force majeure events such as natural calamities, war, cyber threats etc.
3.1.2 Performance
The Bahrain OBF defines a number of endpoints which should be made available by ASPSPs. The Performance of API end points should be measured in response time of individual API requests from receipt of request to delivery of response. While all supported endpoints should be included by ASPSPs when calculating error rates, for reporting response times the consent endpoints should be ignored, as these are not considered part of the process of 'providing the information requested' to the AISP/ PISP for account information or payment initiation.
This section sets out a minimum of four KPIs for performance that an ASPSP should have in place for each of its API. The following table explains these KPIs in detail and provides guidance on how they should be calculated.
Table 2 – Key Indicators based on best practices for Performance
Title | Requirement | Calculation Guidelines | Recommended Benchmark |
PISP response time | For the purpose of calculating the performance indicators, the ASPSP should: a) Calculate the daily average time (in milliseconds) taken, per request, for the ASPSP to PISP with all the information requested | The "time taken per request" should be calculated for each day using the mean value of Time to Last Byte (TTLB) measured in milliseconds, starting from the time that each endpoint request has been fully received by the ASPSP and stopping when the last byte of the response message has been transmitted to the PISP. The following API endpoints should be included when calculating PISP response times, for each endpoint supported by the ASPSP:
The ASPSPs signed response to the POST will inherently act as proof of receipt of the payment order by the ASPSP, which will enable the PISP to log a reference and the date of this receipt. Both the POST and the GET endpoints contain all information relating to the payment, which, depending on the payment type, should include reference, amount, exchange rate, charges, and status (which may change between POST and any subsequent GET). The POST endpoints above cater for the ASPSP to make the information available to the PISP immediately after receipt of the payment order, and the provision of all information on the initiation of the payment transaction and all information accessible to the ASPSP regarding the execution of the payment transaction. The GET endpoints cater for the ASPSP to provide confirmation to the PISP that payment initiation has been successful, in order to enable the PISP to provide this information to the user/customer. Since different endpoints will have different payload sizes for request and response (especially relevant for bulk/batch payment endpoints involving large files), and in order to facilitate a 'like for like' comparison with user/customer interfaces, ASPSPs should report on the average time per megabyte (MB). This can be calculated by dividing the total response time in milliseconds by the total payload response size in MB, across all API calls for all API endpoints for each day. | An average TTLB of 750 milliseconds per response for all but bulk/batch payments. |
AISP response time | For the purpose of calculating the performance indicators, the ASPSP should: a) Calculate the daily average time (in milliseconds) taken, per request, for the ASPSP to provide the AISP with all the information requested | The "time taken per request" should be calculated for each day using the mean value of Time to Last Byte (TTLB) measured in milliseconds, starting from the time that each endpoint request has been fully received by the ASPSP and stopping when the last byte of the response message has been transmitted to the AISP. The following API endpoints should be included when calculating AISP response time, for each endpoint supported by the ASPSP:
Since different endpoints will have different payload sizes for request and response, and in order to facilitate a 'like for like' comparison with user/customer interfaces, it is recommended that ASPSPs also report on the average time per megabyte (MB). This can be calculated by dividing the total response time in milliseconds by the total payload response size in MB, across all API calls for all API endpoints for each day. | An Average TTLB of 750 milliseconds per response, or per page of results for up to 100 records for larger payloads. In practice, all but transactions and statements are likely to be small payloads without pagination. |
Confirmation of Funds (CoF) response time (PISP) | For the purpose of calculating the performance indicators, the ASPSP should:
a) Calculate the daily average time (in milliseconds) taken, per request, for the ASPSP to provide the PISP with a ‘yes/no’ confirmation
| The "time taken per request" should be calculated for each day using the mean value of Time to Last Byte (TTLB) measured in milliseconds, starting from the time that each endpoint request has been fully received by the ASPSP and stopping when the last byte of the response message (i.e. the 'yes/no' confirmation) has been transmitted to the PISP. The following API endpoints should be included when calculating CoF response times for PISP:
| An average TTLB of 300 and a max of 500 ms per response. |
Daily error response rate | For the purpose of calculating the performance indicators, the ASPSP should: a) Calculate the daily error response rate – calculated as the number of error messages concerning errors attributable to the ASPSP sent by the ASPSP to the PISPs, or AISPs per day, divided by the number of requests received by the ASPSP from PISPs or AISPs in the same day
| It is not possible for ASPSPs to respond to AISPs/PISPs with an error message where no TLS (Transport layer security) session has been established. However, ASPSPs should still be able to respond, measure and report on errors relating to endpoint calls and all functional API calls. The error response rate should be calculated as the total number of all 5xx HTTP status codes from all API endpoints per day, divided by the total number of AISP/PISP API requests received across all of these endpoints in the same day, and expressed as a percentage. Errors based on 4xx HTTP status codes are largely attributable to AISP/PISP or user/customer actions or failures, and hence should not be included here. | An average of 0.5% across all endpoints. |
3.2 Traffic Thresholds
The CBB may leverage the monitoring reports submitted by the ASPSPs and other parties, to decide on the traffic thresholds. Basis the usage and adoption of these APIs, the related structures for threshold limits may be established on a future date.
Until the CBB decides on these thresholds, ASPSPs must provide data access to AISPs/PISPs through API calls without any limits or charges.
3.3 Publication of Statistics
ASPSPs must publish to the CBB, statistics on the availability and performance of APIs on a monthly basis as set out in these guidelines.
These statistics should be completed for every API. In case where an ASPSP maintains different versions of their APIs in parallel, then these should be considered as separate APIs and published separately, as they may have different levels of availability and performance.
3.3.1 ASPSP Reporting
The table below provided description/guidance for calculating each element in regard to user/customer interface availability and performance:
Table 3 – Description of ASPSP Reporting elements
# | Field Name | Description/ Definition |
1 | Performance and Availability | |
1.1 | Report Date | The reported date for each calendar day. |
1.2 | Entity Name | Reporting entity’s name. |
1.3 | Endpoint ID | Reported EndPoint ID as defined in the API Endpoint List of the Reporting Template. ASPSPs/ AISPs/ PISPs must only report endpoints that have gone live in their systems. |
1.4 | Uptime | Uptime per each individual endpoint in hours and minutes. (Elapsed time) Calculated as 100% minus the total percentage downtime for each day. |
1.5 | Planned Downtime | Any planned duration that the API endpoints become unavailable. For the avoidance of doubt, this extends to include all systems that are required for the relevant endpoint to be fully functional. |
1.6 | Unplanned Downtime | Any unplanned duration that the API endpoints become unavailable due to technical faults or any other reasons. For the avoidance of doubt, this extends to include all systems that are required for the relevant endpoint to be fully functional. |
1.7 | Max Payment Initiations Per Second (PIPS) | This field is only applicable to Payment Initiation Service (PIS) endpoints. For Account Information Service (AIS) endpoints it should be populated with NULL. The maximum number of successful payment initiations per second (PIPS) for the payment order POST API calls. The PIPS must be reported as whole numbers. |
1.8 | Average TTLB Response Time (Time to Last Byte) | The average (mean) value across all values of Time to Last Byte (TTLB) response time for each API endpoint. The response time clock should start at the point the endpoint call is fully received by the ASPSP and should stop at the point the last byte of the response message is transmitted to the AISP or PISP. |
1.9 | Highest TTLB Response Time (Time to Last Byte) | The highest value of Time to Last Byte (TTLB) response time for each API endpoint. The response time clock should start at the point the endpoint call is fully received by the ASPSP and should stop at the point the last byte of the response message is transmitted to the AISP or PISP. The response time must be reported in milliseconds. |
1.10 | Lowest TTLB Response Time (Time to Last Byte) | The lowest value of Time to Last Byte (TTLB) response time for each API endpoint. The response time clock should start at the point the endpoint call is fully received by the ASPSP and should stop at the point the last byte of the response message is transmitted to the AISP or PISP. The response time must be reported in milliseconds. |
1.11 | Average TTFB Response Time (Time to First Byte) | The average (mean) value across all values of Time to First Byte (TTFB) response time for each API endpoint. The response time clock should start at the point the endpoint call is fully received by the ASPSP. The response time must be reported in milliseconds. |
1.12 | Highest TTFB Response Time (Time to First Byte) | The highest value of Time to First Byte (TTFB) response time for each API endpoint. The response time clock should start at the point the endpoint call is fully received by the ASPSP. The response time must be reported in milliseconds. |
1.13 | Lowest TTFB Response Time (Time to First Byte) | The lowest value of Time to First Byte (TTFB) response time for each API endpoint. The response time clock should start at the point the endpoint call is fully received by the ASPSP. The response time must be reported in milliseconds. |
1.14 | Total Number of API calls | This is the total number of API calls per day per endpoint. |
1.15 | Total TTLB Response Time (Time to Last Byte) | This is the sum of all the TTLB responses of all endpoint calls of each endpoint type. For the avoidance of doubt, this is the sum of all the TTLB response times generated by the total number of API calls for each endpoint. |
1.16 | Total TTFB Response Time (Time to First Byte) | This is the sum of all the TTFB responses of all endpoint calls of each endpoint type. For the avoidance of doubt, this is the sum of all the TTFB response times generated by the total number of API calls for each endpoint. |
1.17 | Total ResponsePayload Size | This is the sum of the payload of all the response messages for all endpoint calls of each endpoint type. For the avoidance of doubt, this is the sum of all the payloads of the response messages generated by the total number of API calls for each endpoint. |
2 | Authentication | |
2.1 | Report Month | Reported calendar month and year (from 1st day of the month starting from 00:00:00 till last day of the month 23:59:59). |
2.2 | Entity Name | Reporting entity’s name. |
2.3 | Authentication Type | This is the type of authentication journeys provided by the ASPSP. It will include 'redirection' and where implemented 'decoupled' model. |
2.4 | API Type | This is the type of services that are being reported for the efficacy of the authentication journey. It includes Account Information Services (AIS) and Payment Initiation Services (PIS). |
2.5 | API Request AISP/PISP Channel | This is the reported AISP/PISP channel for initiating the AIS or PIS consent. This may be provided by AISP/PISPs in the endpoint Request Header under the field 'x-customer-user-agent'. If the string cannot be mapped to a browser, then it will be a mobile app. |
2.6 | ASPSP Authentication Channel | This is the reported ASPSP Authentication channel. It can be web-based (Web) or using the mobile banking app (App). |
2.7 | Consents requiring Authentication | The total number of user/customer consents to require authentication at the ASPSP for the particular combination of authentication type, API type, AISP/PISP channel and ASPSP authentication channel. |
2.8 | Authentications Attempted by users/customers | The total number of authentications that have been attempted by the users/customers (not abandoned). This means that the Users/ Customers have tried to authenticate according to the authentication method required providing biometrics, username, passwords etc. |
2.9 | Authentications Abandoned by users/customers | The total number of user/customer consents to require authentication that has been abandoned by the users/customers. |
2.10 | Authentications Succeeded | The total number of consents requiring authentication that have completed authentications by users/customers and the authentications have succeeded. |
2.11 | Authentications Failed | The total number of consents requiring authentication that have completed authentications by users/customers and the authentications have failed. |
2.12 | Confirmations Required | The total number of consents requiring authorization, that after successful authentication, required a confirmation step. |
2.13 | Confirmations Accepted by user/customer | The total number of successful authentications that required a confirmation step and have been accepted by users/customers. This means that the users/customers proceeded with the access request or the payment order submission and did not cancel the process. |
2.14 | Confirmations Rejected by users/customers | The total number of successful authentications that required a confirmation step and have been rejected by users/customers. This means that the users/customers cancelled the process and did not proceed with the access request or the payment order submission. |
2.15 | Average Authentication Response Time | The average (mean) value across all values of authentication response time for each API endpoint. The response time clock should start when the authentication process has started and should stop when the authentication process has completed/ended. The response time must be reported in milliseconds. |
3 | User/Customer Volumes | |
3.1 | Report Month | Reported calendar month and year (from 1st day of the month starting from 00:00:00 till last day of the month 23:59:59). |
3.2 | Entity Name | Reporting entity’s name. |
3.3 | Retail/Business user/customer | This identifies Retail and Business users/customers for separate reporting. |
3.4 | User/Customer used AIS for the first time | The number of unique users/customers who have authorised access to their account(s) to one or more AISPs for account information services for the first time during the reporting period. For the avoidance of doubt, this refers to new consent/authorisations and not re-authorisations. |
3.5 | User/Customer re-authorised for using AIS | The total number of unique users/customers who have previously authorised access to their account(s) to one or more AISPs for account information services and had to re-authenticate to refresh the account access at least for one of the AISPs during the reporting period. |
3.6 | Total users/customers used AIS | The total number of unique users/customers who: a. have authorised access to their account(s) to one or more AISPs for account information services during the reporting period for the first time. b. have previously authorised access to their account(s) to one or more AISPs for account information services and had their account accessed at least once by any of the AISPs during the reporting period. c. have previously authorised access to their account(s) to one or more AISPs for account information services and had to re-authenticate to refresh the account access at least for one of the AISPs during the reporting period. |
3.7 | User/Customer used PIS for the first time | The number of unique user/customer who have authorised a payment initiation of any type from any of their account(s) via one or more PISPs for the first time during the reporting period. For the avoidance of doubt, a user/customer initiating a payment (e.g. single domestic) using a PISP A and then initiating another payment of different type (e.g. international) using a PISP B within the same ASPSP , should not be double-counted. For business customers, unique users/customers should refer to all employees of the business who have separate authentication credentials and can be identified separately. Multi-banked users/customers cannot be identified so they may be double-counted by different ASPSPs. |
3.8 | Total users/customers used PIS | The total number of unique users/customers who: a. have authorised a payment initiation of any type from any of their account(s) via one or more PISPs for the first time during the reporting period. b. have authorised a payment initiation of any type from any of their account(s) via one or more PISPs during the reporting period and have initiated payments using PIS services before. |
3.9 | Unique users/customers used both AIS and PIS for the first time | Users/Customers accessing both AIS and PIS using the same authentication credentials. |
3.10 | Total unique users/customers used both AIS and PIS | Total users/customers accessing both AIS and PIS using the same authentication credentials. |
3.11 | Total new users/customers for Online Banking | The number of unique users/customers who have been granted access to Online Banking for the first time. |
3.12 | Total new users/customers for Mobile Banking | The number of unique users/customers who have been granted access to Mobile Banking for the first time. |
3.13 | Total number of users/customers used Online Banking | The total number of unique users/customers who have used the Online Banking service for either accessing account information or initiating a payment. |
3.14 | Total number of users/customers used Mobile Banking | The total number of unique users/customers who have used the Mobile Banking service for either accessing account information or initiating a payment. |
4 | AISP/PISP Volumes | |
4.1 | Report Month | Reported calendar month and year (from 1st day of the month starting from 00:00:00 till last day of the month 23:59:59). |
4.2 | Entity Name | Reporting entity’s name. |
4.3 | Total AISPs Registered (at 1st of the month) | This is the cumulative total number of AISP’s, that have been already been on-boarded into the live environment (i.e. production environment) with the ASPSP as at the 1st of the reported month. |
4.4 | AISP Additions | This is the number of AISPs that have been on-boarded into the live environment (i.e. production environment) during the reported month. |
4.5 | AISP Deregistrations | This is the number of AISPs, that have been deregistered with the ASPSP during the reported month. |
4.6 | Cumulative Monthly number of AISPs | This is the cumulative total number of AISP’s, that have been already been on-boarded into the live environment (i.e. production environment) with the ASPSP as at the end of the reported month. |
4.7 | ||