ICICI Bank, the multinational banking and financial services company headquartered in Mumbai, has opened an online marketplace – ‘ICICI Bank API Banking portal’ – comprising nearly 250 APIs (application programming interfaces) for third party developers to connect to and communicate with the bank’s applications.
ICICI Bank, the second largest bank in India in terms of assets and market capitalisation, said this will enable partner companies to co-create customer solutions in a frictionless manner and in a fraction of time usually taken for such integration, thereby significantly increasing their productivity.
Anup Bagchi, executive director, ICICI Bank said “hundreds” of developers are already onboard and working within the marketplace.
Speaking on the initiative, he added: “ICICI Bank has a legacy of leveraging new technology to bring in path-breaking solutions for the banking industry. The API Banking portal is yet another initiative in this direction. It is envisioned to be the gateway for several prospective partner companies to tie-up with the Bank in a quick and frictionless manner.
“The portal offers the largest array of instant APIs by any bank in one single place. We believe that the ‘ICICI Bank API Banking Portal’, will help foster rapid innovation and co-creation with partner. It will also boost productivity for businesses, as they can now partner with us in a short span of time ranging from just a few weeks to few days as compared to the few months taken earlier. We are happy to note the encouraging interest in the partnering with the Bank, with hundreds of developers already co-creating on the portal.”
API portal for developers
The ‘ICICI Bank API Banking Portal’ will enable developers of prospective partner companies across the globe to seamlessly sign up on it, create an application, select the application, test it out and get the sample code. With this, businesses, fintechs, corporates and e-commerce start-ups can easily partner with the Bank and co-create innovative customer solutions in a frictionless manner, all from the convenience of a single portal.
The usage of portal will simplify the process of digital collaboration for a partner company with the Bank and reduce the time taken to develop a business solution to a few days. This will significantly raise productivity for partner companies. Without such a facility, an API integration typically takes a few months.
The APIs are available across an array of categories including payments & collections like IMPS, UPI payment/collection, accounts & deposits and cards & loans. After testing the solution on the sandbox environment, developers can upgrade to the UAT environment for end to end real-time testing, post signing an NDA with the Bank. Additionally, the portal incorporates a detailed workflow for conveniently moving the API solution to the final production stage, thereby eliminating the hassles of manual to and fro.
This launch is a step towards bringing in the benefits of ‘Open Banking’ in the industry, which is regarded as a key enabler to drive speedy tie ups and digitisation in the country. According to the Open Banking Report 2019, the United Kingdom, Australia, and European Union (EU) are the pioneers in Open Banking based on factors like the spread of Open APIs, regulatory requirements, standardization initiatives, and the presence of a central TPP regulatory body.