API.expert Weekly Banking API Analysis: Railsbank Is Tops

This Week’s Banking API Highlights

• Tide in the Open Banking API – UK – Production category takes the overall title again this week with a CASC score of 9.84, up from 9.82 last week.
• HSBC in the Open Banking API – UK – Open Data category takes the overall title again with a median latency of 91 ms, up from 88 ms last week.
• Barclays (Sandbox Auth) in the Open Banking API – UK – Sandbox category takes the overall wooden spoon this week with a CASC score of 4.98.
• We take a look at what Railsbank is doing right and whether there are any ways that might be able to improve even further.

Something of interest

Railsbank tops the competitive Open Banking API – PSD2 category this week with an exceptional CASC score of 9.66. It’s not surprising it is doing so well, it has a 100% pass rate, very few outliers, and is fast. But you never rest on your laurels. Continuous improvement must be the watchword. Are there any areas that Railsbank could look to improve?

We see a big regional variation. Europe is by far the quickest region. Even North America is 400 ms or so slower. Oceania is a second slower than Europe.

This might not matter so much to Railsbank because its users are mainly in Europe. But even if your users are physically in Europe, the app that they are calling your API from might not be hosted there. That’s why you need to be monitoring your APIs actively. You shouldn’t make assumptions about the performance that your users are experiencing. You need to measure it.

Even within Europe, you might want to try and squeeze out those extra 32 ms of overall latency that Azure users are experiencing compared to IBM Cloud ones.

Azure in Europe is slowest for both TCP Connection Time and Handshake Time. It’s not a lot, but every millisecond counts. Can you do something about it?

And Europe overall is much better for TCP Connection Time and Handshake Time. Railsbank is probably hosted there! Perhaps this is just geography, but often configuration issues are the cause of differences in performance between regions. Railsbank is a very good API.

Could it be a better by taking a close look at all its cloud connection configurations, in Europe and the rest of the world?

Banking API Analysis: Overall Performance

Week Ending 22 March 2021

Category	Organization	CASC score
Cryptocurrency Exchanges	RadarRelay	9.27
Fintech	Square (Sandbox)	9.51
Open Banking: PSD2	Railsbank	9.66
Open Banking UK: API Sandbox	Royal Bank of Scotland (Sandbox)	9.50
Open Banking UK: Production	Tide	9.84
Open Banking UK: Open Data	Bank of Ireland	9.66

Tide in the Open Banking – UK – Production category takes the overall title again this week with a CASC score of 9.84 up from 9.82. When you look at CASC scores you are looking for a ranking of at least 9.00. Even better is if you can achieve a CASC score of 9.50 or better. This week we we are looking at organizations which achieve CASC scores of 9.50 or better. Five out of the six categories are headed by organization with a CASC score of 9.50 or more this week, up from four last week. All six categories are headed by an API with CASC score of 9.27 or more, which is a very acceptable level of performance.

Banking API Analysis: Latency

Week Ending 22 March 2021

Category	Organization	Median Latency
Cryptocurrency Exchanges	Kraken	212 ms
Fintech	Stripe	332 ms
Open Banking: PSD2	Railsbank	102 ms
Open Banking UK: API Sandbox	Royal Bank of Scotland (Sandbox)	150 ms
Open Banking UK: Production	Tide (Auth)	150 ms
Open Banking UK: Open Data	HSBC	91 ms

HSBC in the Open Banking – UK – Open Data category takes the overall title again with a median latency of 91 ms, up from 88 ms last week.One thing that should be considered when looking at CASC scores. It’s possible for an API to have periods of time when they are very fast but also periods when they are extremely slow. This means that users will very often have a subpar experience.You don’t want to simply be fast from time to time. You want to be consistently running swiftly. It is not a good idea to rely on your fastest performance. Overall speed is the real issue.

Banking API Analysis: Worst Overall Quality

Week Ending 22 March 2021

Category	Organization	CASC score
Cryptocurrency Exchanges	Coinlore	7.03
Fintech	Nobody under 8.00!
Open Banking: PSD2	Nobody under 8.00!
Open Banking UK: API Sandbox	Barclays (Sandbox Auth)	4.98
Open Banking UK: Production	B (bank)	5.25
Open Banking UK: Open Data	Halifax	7.29

Barclays (Sandbox Auth) in the Open Banking – UK – Sandbox category takes the overall wooden spoon this week with a CASC score of 4.98. See you again in a week as we approach the end of March (already!). Also don’t forget to look out for our monthly report for February and the weekly and monthly non-financial API reports. We will also be publishing special reports on the State of the APIs in the 2020, so that’s something else to look forward to!

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