Is Zenith just a wrapper around the bank API?

Effectively, yes — plus the AISP licence, the eIDAS certificates, and 2,400+ bank integrations kept working. That's the part that takes months. The wrapper is the easy bit.

Who holds the licence?

We do, through regulated open banking infrastructure. You inherit the compliance; you don't apply for anything.

Do you ever see my bank password?

No. You authenticate on your bank's own login page. Zenith receives read-only transaction data and never touches your credentials.

Can I get more than 90 days of history?

Your bank will only hand over 90 days at the moment you connect. Zenith captures that at connect and keeps everything from that point on, so your history grows from day one. Connect early.

Can Zenith make payments?

No. Read-only, deliberately. Payment initiation needs your own PISP licence.

I already have an AISP licence. Is Zenith still worth it?

If you're integrating more than two or three banks, usually yes — you're paying for the 2,400 integrations and the maintenance, not the licence.

What does it cost, and can I cancel?

€5 per bank account per month. Cancel any time. Money-back guarantee.

Direct bank API vs Zenith

You can connect straight to your bank's API. Here's what that actually takes.

Every European bank is legally required to expose a PSD2 API. Getting to it is the hard part: a licence from your national regulator, an eIDAS certificate, and a fresh integration for every bank you add. Zenith hands you the same data from 2,400+ European banks — one schema, five minutes, no licence required.

Connect your bank Read the API docs

Read-only · PSD2 · €5 per bank account / month · Money-back guarantee

Direct bank API11 steps · per bank

AISP licence
eIDAS certificate
Developer portal
OAuth2 + consents
Repeat per bank

2 weeks, after licensing

With Zenith7 steps · once

Pick your country, then your bank
Log in at your bank and approve read-only access
You're redirected back; your balance is already there

5 minutes · 2,400+ banks

Zenith isn't a workaround for the bank API. It is the bank API. We hold the licence, the certificates and the per-bank integrations, and hand you clean JSON. This page shows you exactly what you'd be taking on if you did it yourself — so you can decide honestly.

Side by side

The same transactions, two very different paths.

Direct bank API compared with Zenith, row by row
What you are comparing	Direct bank API	Zenith
Time to first transaction	Direct: 2 weeks of build — after you're licensed	Zenith: 5 minutes
Regulatory licence	Direct: AISP licence from your national financial authority	Zenith: None. Ours covers you.
eIDAS certificate	Direct: You buy, install and renew a QWAC/QSealC (X.509)	Zenith: None
Banks per integration	Direct: One	Zenith: 2,400+ across Europe
Authentication	Direct: OAuth2 auth-code flow → access token valid 5 minutes	Zenith: One click in your bank's app
Multiple accounts	Direct: One IBAN per consent — repeat the whole flow per account	Zenith: Add accounts in the UI
Consent renewal	Direct: You build the re-consent flow before it expires	Zenith: Zenith tracks it and prompts you
Transaction history	Direct: 90 days — and older data only inside the first 5 minutes of a new consent	Zenith: 90 days at connect, then kept and accumulated indefinitely
Refresh limits	Direct: You budget them yourself (typically 4 calls/day/account)	Zenith: Handled. Synced up to 4× a day.
Foreign currency	Direct: Raw, in the original currency	Zenith: Converted to EUR on the way in
Data shape	Direct: Berlin Group "standard" — different per bank in practice	Zenith: One schema, everywhere
Where the data lands	Direct: You build it	Zenith: REST API, Google Sheets, or MCP for Claude & Codex
Ongoing maintenance	Direct: Yours, forever	Zenith: Ours
Cost	Direct: Licence + certificate + dev time + upkeep	Zenith: €5 per bank account / month

Two checklists

One bank account, two checklists.

Same bank. Same account. Same transactions at the end of it.

Direct, via your bank's developer portal

11 steps

01 Apply for an AISP licence at your national financial authority
02 Obtain an eIDAS certificate in X.509 PEM format
03 Create an account on the bank's developer portal
04 Register your TPP app and store the client ID and secret — the secret is usually shown once
05 Subscribe to the Account Information product and pick a plan
06 Upload your certificate to the app
07 Email the portal's support team to request a simulation account
08 Build the OAuth2 authorization-code flow; handle an access token that expires in minutes
09 POST /consents, redirect the user for SCA, then poll consent status until valid
10 GET /accounts, then GET /accounts/{id}/transactions — and pull anything older than 90 days inside the first few minutes, or lose it
11 Repeat steps 3–10 for every other bank you need

With Zenith

7 steps

01 Create a Zenith account — under a minute
02 Pick your country, then your bank
03 Log in at your bank and approve read-only access
04 You're redirected back; your balance is already there
05 Add billing — €5 per account, per month
06 Transactions start arriving, refreshed several times a day
07 Choose where the data goes: API, Google Sheets, or MCP

Connect your bank

Now do the left column again for your second bank.

Think this is overstated? Search "open banking" plus your bank's name and open their developer portal. Look for two words: licence and certificate. Every European bank has them, because PSD2 requires them. That's the wall — and it's there before you write a line of code.

Scale

One bank is a project. Five banks is five projects.

PSD2 gave Europe a shared standard. It did not give Europe a shared implementation. Field names drift, balance types disagree, pagination differs, error codes are the bank's own, and every provider runs its own developer portal, its own certificate upload and its own sandbox request process.

So the work doesn't compound — it repeats. Each new bank is a new portal, a new sandbox, a new set of quirks, and a new thing to keep working.

Zenith is one integration — 2,400+ banks across Europe, one connect flow, one response shape.

Your second bank takes as long as your first: five minutes.

After launch

The integration isn't the hard part. Keeping it alive is.

Rate limits
Most banks cap you at four refreshes a day per account. Blow through it and you're dark until tomorrow.
Consent expiry
PSD2 consents lapse. Someone has to notice, and someone has to ask the user to re-authorise before the data stops.
The 90-day cliff
History beyond 90 days is only reachable in the first minutes of a new consent. Miss the window and it's gone. Zenith captures it at connect and keeps it from then on.
Pending vs booked
Transactions change shape as they settle. Deduplicating them without dropping or double-counting is its own small project.
Balance types
closingBooked, interimAvailable, expected. Banks disagree on which they return and what they mean.
Foreign currency
A USD charge on a EUR account arrives as USD. Zenith converts it on the way in, so your totals are just totals.

For developers

From token to transactions in two calls.

A read-only REST API over plain HTTPS and JSON. Predictable schema, cursor pagination and a machine-readable OpenAPI contract.

GET /transactions
GET /bank-accounts
GET /bank-accounts/{id}/balances
GET /expenses
GET /partners
GET /reports/yearly-summary

Read the API docs Get an API key

# 1. Who am I? (verifies your credentials)
curl https://hub.zenith-books.com/api/public/v1/me \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ZENITH_KEY" \
  -H "X-Company-Key: $COMPANY_KEY"

# 2. Last month's bank transactions
curl "https://hub.zenith-books.com/api/public/v1/transactions?date_from=2026-06-01&date_to=2026-06-30" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ZENITH_KEY" \
  -H "X-Company-Key: $COMPANY_KEY"

Questions

Questions before you build.

Five minutes, or two weeks. Same transactions.

Connect your first bank account and see your balance before you finish reading the developer portal signup form.

Connect your bank Talk to us

Read-only · PSD2 · Money-back guarantee