Something of interest
HSBC languishes at the bottom of the Open Banking – UK – Open Data category of Fintech APIs this month, as it so often does. 
The API has a 100% pass rate and is blisteringly fast. So why does it find itself in the Amber Zone? It does have the highest percentage of outliers at 2.91%. The CASC score is all about consistency. And the HSBC API might be fast, but it is not consistently fast. If we look at the average latency in November for a couple of example endpoints we will see the issue. 
For the HSBC Get FCA Service Metrics BCA V1.0 endpoint (above), we the average response is very quick because of the caching at the gateway but there are a lot of outliers and variation in the response time. 
We see this also for the HSBC Get Unsecured SME Loans V2.2 endpoint. Most calls are fast, but there are a lot of slower ones. That’s because the cache refreshes periodically and the output has to be pulled from the backend and that is much slower process. 
The heatmap for this endpoint is mostly green, but there are some island of yellow, orange and red when the returned payload was not available in the cache. In an API with a higher CASC score, we would see more green. Being slower, but more consistent, will mean a less flaky API and, generally, a better overall experience for the end-user.
Fintech API Ratings: Overall Performance
November 2020
Category
Organization
CASC score
Cryptocurrency Exchanges
Coinpaprika
9.31
Fintech
Stripe