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Published on:
January 30, 2023
By
Shreeja Ray

API Banking: A Revolution in the Banking Industry

The emergence of digital banking, Fintech firms, and highly tailored goods and services signaled the beginning of the banking industry's significant transformation over the past ten years. With the advent of NEFT, RTGS, and IMPS, the banking industry has now achieved another paradigm shift known as API led banking or open banking, which is poised to transform it completely.

What Are APIs?

APIs allow developers to create apps that link to other companies' technology. Banks may streamline customer service through APIs. Innovative banking solutions are developed. Problems including a high number of failed payments, noncompliant or inefficient foreign payments, managing internal roles and responsibilities, altering or canceling payments quickly, and more.

Three API types enable innovative solutions. Examples:

Private APIs

Most banks employ proprietary APIs to improve operational efficiency.

Partner APIs

Typically between a bank and a third-party partner, partner APIs enable expansion, notably into new channels, products, etc. A bank might use an API partnership to automatically prepare loan documentation for loan applications. The bank might automate loans, improving efficiency. Most banks will migrate from private to partner APIs.

Open APIs

This framework allows other parties to access business data. Banks often worry about data and client information security.

What is API Banking and How Does it Work?

The technical interface between software programs is typically called an application programming interface, or API. With this interface, a third-party application can synchronize and connect with the resources and services of a bank, which is useful in the banking industry. The term "API banking" typically refers to a set of protocols that make a bank's services available to outside businesses. In the end, it assists both banks and outside businesses in enhancing their services and providing customers with many more options collectively than they could have done separately. In recent years, API has taken on a greater significance for banks and Fintech businesses. APIs can make financial services more swift and effective by giving them greater ways to share data, integrate with systems, and personalize offerings. In reality, it can help banks by allowing third-party platforms secure access to the services, which can aid businesses in creating products based on financial services.

What are the Benefits of API Banking?

1. The convenience of handling one's funds has increased due to the removal of several administrative obstacles. Applications for business loans, monitoring one's credit score, and other procedures have all gotten much faster and easier.

2. One may now control, examine, and keep track of all financial transactions from a single location and have a single picture of all of their finances.

3. The cost of serving the underserved and unbanked has decreased thanks to API banking's contribution to innovation, and more products and services are now being provided that better meet their requirements.

4. Now that account balances can be retrieved in real-time using API banking, transactional operations can move more quickly.

5. Better information for reconciliation is now available in real-time thanks to API banking, which speeds up the execution of vendor and dealer finance transactions and promotes faster ecosystem churn.

The Future of APIs in Banking

The future of APIs is bright given the widespread adoption and rising usage of banking APIs today. It displays the API linkages between well-known companies. The infrastructure provided by a third party will host this.

Future banking APIs, for instance, could assist banks in collaborating with e-commerce sites to streamline the process of accepting payments online. In order to help provide finance and lending options at POS sites, they can even incorporate actual banks and businesses.

It is revolutionary to use APIs to create new ways of interacting with customers, suppliers, transactions, and data. Financial institutions will face substantial opportunity costs and see a decline in their competitive value if they don't engage in APIs immediately.

In conclusion, we can now say that we live in a "API society" but that banks are only now joining in. Although API technology is not a new concept, client growth, market upheaval, and regulatory change indicate that the banking industry is busily planning an API revolution.

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Updated on:
March 16, 2024