Open Banking Integration Across Nine Banks

Context

Sanbod operates an Open Banking platform that sits between banks and the FinTech companies and startups that want to build on top of their infrastructure. I joined as Senior Technical Manager in November 2021, later taking on a combined CTO & CPO role, and led the platform's technical delivery through November 2023.

Business Challenge

Open Banking in Iran meant connecting a growing platform to the core banking systems of multiple banks — each with its own integration requirements, security expectations, and operational constraints — while giving FinTech partners a single, consistent interface to build against. Reliability and correctness mattered more than usual here: this is financial data moving between institutions.

Mahdi's Role

I led the technical team responsible for the console, back-office, and bank back-office panels, and was the primary point of contact for the engineering side of new bank integrations. Later, as CTO & CPO, I also carried product-direction responsibility for the platform.

Technical Constraints

• Each bank's core banking system had its own integration profile, requiring the platform to normalize behavior across nine different backends.
• Integration work had to proceed without disrupting existing bank and FinTech partner traffic.
• Data exchanged between banks and FinTech integrators required API designs that could not tolerate ambiguity or silent failure.

Approach

Features for the console, back-office, and bank back-office panels were built in React, with Python and Node.js used across backend services. New bank integrations were treated as first-class engineering work rather than one-off scripts — each one went through code review and was expected to meet the same quality bar as core platform code.

Architecture & Implementation

Needs Mahdi's input: the CV and available notes confirm the technology stack (React, Python, Node.js) and the integration scope (nine banks, including Parsian, Pasargad, Saman, and Iran Zamin Bank), but do not document the specific service architecture, API contract design, or data flow between the platform and each bank's core system. Add detail here once available.

Collaboration & Leadership

I worked directly with banking providers on integration and adoption, partnered with backend engineers on API design, and introduced code review and mentoring practices across the technical team — shortening ramp-up time for junior engineers joining an already-complex integration surface.

Outcome

The platform reached direct core-system integration with nine banks, giving FinTech partners a consistent way to build Open Banking products across all of them.

Technologies

React · Python · Node.js · REST APIs · PostgreSQL

Lessons & Engineering Principles

Integrating with nine independent, high-stakes external systems only stays manageable if every integration is held to the same review and testing standard — treating "just this one bank" as a special case is exactly how integration debt accumulates.