Niagara's Choice FCU API integration (OpenBanking)

1. Accounting sync for a member's small business

A member who runs a Niagara Falls hospitality business needs daily checking-account activity pushed into QuickBooks Online. We pull transactions through a consented OpenBanking endpoint, normalize counterparty and MCC fields, and push them as JournalEntry records. NCFCU's RDC stream is reconciled against deposits the bookkeeper already entered to avoid duplicates.

2. Mortgage underwriting and asset verification

NCFCU offers first-time and repeat home-buyer programs. With member consent, a lender pulls 60–90 days of statements via our statement-export API to verify reserves and income. The same flow can replace screen-scraping that data aggregators historically used — Alliant Credit Union swapped scraping for the Plaid Core Exchange API exactly for this reason.

3. Real-time payments via FedNow

More than 1,500 US financial institutions are now live on FedNow, with the per-transaction limit raised to $10M in late 2025. We can stand up a thin FedNow request-for-payment wrapper around an NCFCU member account so a downstream payroll or marketplace platform can settle instantly 24×7 instead of waiting for next-day ACH.

4. PFM and credit-score dashboards

The Savvy Money credit-score widget rolled out in NCFCU's online and mobile banking is a strong member touchpoint. We can expose it as a JSON endpoint — score, score range, factors, refresh date — so a third-party PFM or financial-coaching app can include it next to NCFCU balances without the member re-authenticating.

5. Internal compliance and audit telemetry

For the credit union's internal teams we can ingest mobile-app authentication events, RDC submissions, and digital-wallet provisioning into a single audit feed. This supports NCUA exam preparation, Regulation E error-resolution timelines, and BSA/AML monitoring without bolting on yet another vendor portal.

Authorization & token exchange

POST /api/v1/ncfcu/auth/token
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "grant_type": "member_consent",
  "member_id": "NCFCU-XXXX",
  "consent_id": "cnst_01HM...",
  "scope": ["accounts:read", "transactions:read", "transfers:write"]
}

200 OK
{
  "access_token": "eyJhbGciOi...",
  "refresh_token": "rt_01HM...",
  "expires_in": 3600,
  "scope": "accounts:read transactions:read",
  "consent_expires_at": "2026-11-11T00:00:00Z"
}

Statement & transaction pull

GET /api/v1/ncfcu/accounts/{acct_id}/transactions
  ?from=2026-04-01&to=2026-04-30&page=1&limit=100
Authorization: Bearer <ACCESS_TOKEN>

200 OK
{
  "account_id": "S0000-12345",
  "currency": "USD",
  "available_balance": 4321.07,
  "ledger_balance": 4380.55,
  "transactions": [
    {
      "id": "txn_01HM...",
      "posted_at": "2026-04-29T14:02:11Z",
      "amount": -42.18,
      "type": "card_purchase",
      "merchant": "TIM HORTONS #1023",
      "mcc": "5814",
      "channel": "card"
    }
  ],
  "next_cursor": "eyJwYWdlIjoy..."
}

Remote deposit (RDC) webhook

POST https://your-app.example.com/webhooks/ncfcu/rdc
X-NCFCU-Signature: t=1714...,v1=8b9d...

{
  "event": "rdc.deposit.posted",
  "deposit_id": "dep_01HM...",
  "member_id": "NCFCU-XXXX",
  "amount": 312.50,
  "check_number": "1042",
  "hold_release_at": "2026-05-04T12:00:00Z",
  "image_hashes": {
    "front_sha256": "f4c2...",
    "back_sha256": "9a1e..."
  }
}

All webhooks are HMAC-signed; retries follow an exponential backoff up to 24 hours so transient downstream failures don't drop deposit events.

Regulatory framing

Niagara's Choice FCU is a federally chartered credit union supervised by the National Credit Union Administration. Any integration we build follows NCUA digital service expectations, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act privacy and safeguards rules, Regulation E (electronic fund transfers), and the CFPB Section 1033 Personal Financial Data Rights rule, which is reshaping how consumer-permissioned data sharing works in the US.

Operational controls

• Member-permissioned tokens only; no shared credentials retained in plaintext.
• Scope-bound access (accounts:read, transactions:read, transfers:write) with revocation hooks.
• Field-level redaction for SSN, full PAN, and CVV before any external transport.
• Audit log retention aligned with BSA recordkeeping (5 years minimum).
• Data-minimization: only the fields the integrator actually needs are surfaced.

Deliverables checklist

• OpenAPI / Swagger specification covering accounts, transactions, transfers, RDC and webhooks.
• Protocol & auth-flow report (OAuth-style token chain, refresh, revocation).
• Runnable source for login + statement + transfer endpoints (Python and Node.js).
• Automated test suite plus Postman / Insomnia collections.
• Compliance memo covering NCUA digital service expectations, GLBA, Regulation E, and CFPB Rule 1033 readiness.
• Migration notes if you are moving off screen-scraping toward consent-based aggregator APIs.

Engagement workflow

1. Scope confirmation — which surfaces (balances, transactions, transfers, RDC, credit score).
2. Protocol analysis & API design (2–5 business days).
3. Build & internal validation against sandbox or staged member accounts (3–8 business days).
4. Docs, sample code, automated tests (1–2 business days).
5. First delivery in 5–15 business days; FedNow or RDC additions may extend.

About us

OpenFinance Lab is an independent studio focused on fintech, banking, and open-data API integration. Our engineers come from retail banks, credit unions, payment networks, and mobile-protocol analysis backgrounds. We understand NCUA examination cycles, GLBA safeguards, and the upcoming consent and data-portability requirements of CFPB Rule 1033, and we ship end-to-end APIs under those constraints rather than around them.

• Credit unions, community banks, payment gateways, lending, and PFM.
• OAuth / consent ledger design and aggregator integrations (Plaid, MX, Finicity).
• Python / Node.js / Go SDKs, webhook stacks, and audit pipelines.
• Two engagement models: source-code delivery from $300, or pay-per-call billing on a hosted API.

Contact

For quotes or to submit your target app and requirements, use our contact page.

Contact page