# first direct

**Canonical:** https://apis.io/providers/first-direct/  
**Website:** https://www.firstdirect.com/  
**APIs profiled:** 4

first direct is a telephone- and internet-based retail bank and a division of HSBC UK Bank plc, headquartered in Leeds, England and launched in 1989. It offers personal current accounts, savings, credit cards, loans, mortgages and insurance to UK consumers with a reputation for customer service, operating with no physical branches of its own. As an HSBC brand, first direct participates in the UK Open Banking regime under HSBC UK - one of the nine CMA9 banks mandated by the Competition and Markets Authority - and is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA). Its Open Banking surfaces conform to the Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE / Open Banking Limited) standards - a public, unauthenticated Open Data API (personal current account product reference data, ATM and branch locators, published on the shared HSBC api.hsbc.com host where "first direct" appears as a distinct brand) and the FAPI-secured OBIE Read/Write APIs - Account and Transaction Information (AIS), Payment Initiation (PIS) and Confirmation of Funds (CBPII) - onboarded and documented through HSBC's developer portal at develop.hsbc.com, which serves the HSBC UK, first direct and M&S Bank brands.

## Kin Score — 56.6 / 100 (strong)

Scored 2026-08-20 under rubric 0.12.0. Trend: flat (+0.0 from 56.6).

| Facet | Score |
|---|---|
| Discoverability | 92.6 |
| Contract Quality | 51.2 |
| Governance | 16.7 |
| Contract Governance | 16.7 |
| Operational Transparency | 36.8 |
| Developer Ergonomics | 61.3 |
| Commercial Clarity | 34.2 |
| Access Clarity | 34.2 |

Regulatory layer — **Banking & Open Finance**: 88.6 (matched via tags).

## Agent readiness — 42.9 (agent-ready)

| Dimension | Value |
|---|---|
| Spec Presence | yes |
| Agentic Access | derived |
| Reversibility Documented | no |
| MCP Server | no |
| Auth Clarity | yes |
| Idempotency | documented |
| Error Semantics | documented |
| OpenAPI Examples | no |
| Rate Limit Signal | verified |
| Event Surface Described | no |
| Agent Skills | derived |
| Well Known Catalog | no |
| Consent Identity | yes |
| Agent Card | no |
| Dry Run Mode | no |

## Access

Self-serve signup (HSBC developer portal) · public Open Data — onboarding: self-serve, pricing: unknown, trial: no (confidence: medium).

## APIs (4)

- **first direct Open Data API** — Public, unauthenticated OBIE Open Data API exposing first direct product reference data - personal current accounts and related read-only reference data - published on the share...
- **first direct Account and Transaction Information API (AIS)** — OBIE Read/Write Account and Transaction Information (AIS) API for first direct accounts, exposed through HSBC's developer platform. FAPI-secured with OAuth2/OIDC, mutual-TLS cli...
- **first direct Payment Initiation API (PIS)** — OBIE Read/Write Payment Initiation (PIS) API for first direct accounts, exposed through HSBC's developer platform. FAPI-secured with OAuth2/OIDC, mutual-TLS and PSD2 strong cust...
- **first direct Confirmation of Funds API (CBPII)** — OBIE Read/Write Confirmation of Funds (CBPII) API for first direct accounts, exposed through HSBC's developer platform. FAPI-secured with OAuth2/OIDC, mutual-TLS and PSD2 strong...

## MCP servers (1)

- **first direct MCP Server**

## Agentic access (1)

- **First Direct Agentic Access** — 86 operations · 20 acting

## Security (3)

- **First Direct Authentication** — oauth2/openIdConnect/mutualTLS · 2 schemes
- **First Direct Domain Security** — TLSv1.3 · HSTS · DMARC
- **First Direct Vulnerability Disclosure** — Bugcrowd · security.txt · contact published

## Tags

Financial-Services, Banking, Open Banking, PSD2, OBIE, United Kingdom, Payments, Account Information, Open Data, HSBC, Fintech

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Profiled by [API Evangelist](https://apievangelist.com) and published on [APIs.io](https://apis.io/providers/first-direct/). Scores are computed from the provider's own public artifacts under a published rubric.