Short answer: Open banking in Israel lets licensed providers read customers' bank and card data, with consent, through standardized APIs, and lets licensed initiators start payments from those accounts. It rests on two laws, the Financial Information Service Law of 2021 for data and the Regulation of Payment Services and Payment Initiation Law of 2023 for payments. For most businesses the practical route is building on a licensed provider's API rather than obtaining a license.
Key takeaways
- Two laws, two capabilities: data access comes from the 2021 law, and payment initiation from the 2023 law, in force since June 2024.
- Licensing sits with the ISA: only licensed financial information service providers may receive the data, and payment initiation needs its own license or approval.
- One technical standard: the Bank of Israel adopted the Berlin Group NextGenPSD2 standard, and a June 7, 2026 Israel Securities Authority directive applies it to payment companies too.
- Screen scraping is restricted: the law limits access through customers' own login credentials, which pushes products onto consented APIs.
What can be built on Israeli open banking
The data covers accounts, card transactions, credit and securities holdings, which supports several product types.
| Use case | Relies on | Typical builder |
|---|---|---|
| Underwriting from real transactions | Data access | Lenders, SME finance, BNPL |
| Cash-flow and bookkeeping automation | Data access | Accounting and finance tools |
| Account-to-account checkout | Payment initiation | E-commerce, bill payment |
| Personal finance and comparison | Data access | Consumer apps, advisors |
License or partner
A license brings supervision plus capital and insurance requirements that the regulator has aligned with European rules. That makes sense for companies whose core product is the data or the payment itself. Everyone else usually integrates with a licensed provider and focuses engineering on the product layer.
