But first, something of interest
In collaboration with our partners at Fractal Labs, we have completed our quest to get up and running with monitoring all nine CMA9 banks for the Open Banking – UK – Production category. Overall, for the week beginning 3 November 2020, we rate 82% of the CMA9 Open Banking – UK – Production APIs as good or excellent (CASC scores of 8.00 or over for good, 9.00 or over for excellent) and 18% as needing attention (CASC score between 6.00 and 7.99 inclusive). No CMA9 APIs are rated bad (CASC score of less than 6.00). This can generally be considered an encouraging finding for the current health of the Open Banking sector in the UK. One thing we should stress is these are identical calls, made in the same way, to the same endpoints. We cannot really comment on specific instances where you see something different without working with you (which we would be delighted to do - contact APImetrics today!). 
We don’t just monitor the CMA9 banks, of course. Several of the CMA9 banks have more than one brand plus there are other competitors, established and new entrant, in the space. We will carry on adding banks in this category as we can. It’s not always easy. Open Banking should be all about openness and strict compliance to standards. And with some banks, we have been able to get up and running in a few minutes; with others, it took rather longer! In Open Banking, the comparison 9and competition) between the APIs is direct as the banks are offering the same services through implementations of the same endpoints. We see quite a bit of variation in the quality of the APIs from Danske Bank with a very good CASC score of 9.49 through Creation Cards (Auth) languishing at the bottom of the Amber Zone. But Open Banking is a level playing field. There’s no excuse for not delivering a world class API. 28 (82%) out of the 34 APIs are in the Green Zone that indicates a good API and 7 (21%) have CASC scores above 9.00, but there is still room for improvement for those 21 (62%). 6 (18%) are in the Amber Zone and would definitely benefit from some sustained attention. This is why you should be actively monitoring your APIs. You need to know how good you are. But you can also monitor your competitors’ APIs too. How do you compare? Who is the weakest link? You don’t want it to be you. And if you are monitoring, you have the solid evidence to prove to the regulator and your competitors that it wasn’t you. (Of course, it might be you, in which case, it is best to know the truth as soon as possible so that you can start putting things right).
API Performance Headlines: CASC
We look at hundreds of API endpoints and pull all the metrics together to give you a general feeling for the service quality for an organization’s APIs in a particular category.
Top CMA9 & Finance API Ratings
Week Ending 10 November 2020
Category
Organization
CASC score
Cryptocurrency Exchanges
HitBTC
9.47
Fintech
Stripe