Bank im Bistum Essen Open Banking & API Access

Bank im Bistum Essen (BIC GENODED1BBE) is a cooperative bank rooted in the church and social economy, serving both business and personal customers across the Essen region. With open-banking.io you can bring your Bank im Bistum Essen balances and transactions into one place — and, if you write software, read them programmatically. The service is zero-knowledge and certificate-free: your data is decrypted locally with a key only you hold, so no eIDAS certificate and no PSD2 licence of your own is required.

How to connect Bank im Bistum Essen

Connecting happens entirely inside the open-banking.io dashboard — there is no API call, code, or key involved in this step.

  1. Sign up at open-banking.io and set an encryption passphrase. Your key pair is generated on your own device; the service only ever sees your public key.
  2. In the dashboard, choose Bank im Bistum Essen and select the account type you need — business or personal.
  3. You are redirected to Bank im Bistum Essen's own secure login to approve access under PSD2. You authenticate directly with the bank; open-banking.io never sees your credentials.
  4. Once you approve, your accounts sync into the dashboard. Consent lasts up to 180 days, after which you simply re-approve on the bank's screen.

Access your data

Reading data programmatically is an optional developer step you take after the connection exists. On the Developers page, create an API key and export a credentials.json — this bundles the API key with your private decryption key. Then use the CLI (openbanking accounts, openbanking transactions, openbanking sync), an SDK, or the REST API. Requests send the X-Api-Key header, and every response is decrypted locally with your own key. The CLI and SDK only read and sync connections you already made in the dashboard — there is no connect command. An API key alone returns ciphertext; without your private key, no one, including open-banking.io, can read it.

Pricing is roughly EUR 3/month for full access.

Do I need a certificate or licence?

No. open-banking.io is certificate-free — no eIDAS QWAC and no PSD2 registration on your side. You authenticate through Bank im Bistum Essen's own consent flow.

Can open-banking.io read my Bank im Bistum Essen data?

No. It is zero-knowledge and stores only your public key. Data is decrypted on your device with a private key that never leaves it.

How long does access last before renewal?

Bank im Bistum Essen permits consent for up to 180 days. When it expires, reconnect in the dashboard and re-approve on the bank's login screen.

Start at open-banking.io.