Banking APIs Weekly Analysis: The Fastest APIs

HSBC again is the fastest Banking API even as it languishes in the Amber Zone. The next five fastest Banking APIs are all NatWest Group brands, but Royal Bank of Scotland come somewhat further down the table. This isn’t necessarily something surprising. RBS and, especially, NatWest return a much longer list of ATMs and branches than Coutts (and Esme Loans doesn’t even have any).

Coutts is a fast Banking API, but its DNS Lookup Time is affecting its performance especially from Azure. Even 28-29 ms is a very high fraction of the overall latency for a fast API.

Matters are even worse at Esme Loans, where only AWS has a DNS Lookup Time less than 60-61 ms.

NatWest Group really does need to look into optimizing DNS for their APIs. That’s why you need to actively monitor your APIs: just because a Banking API seems fast doesn’t mean that it is not underperforming. DNS Lookup Time should never be as high as 60-61 ms.

NatWest itself shows another pattern. It is slowest from the IBM Cloud for DNS Lookup Time and has a time of 28 ms from the other clouds. Only AWS is always fast.

This might suggest that it is the cloud for which performance has been optimized. But it is a mistake to just optimize for a single cloud, even the most popular one. Not everyone might be calling your Banking API from that cloud.

Santander is not a fast Banking API, but it puts NatWest Group to shame when it comes to DNS Lookup Time. DNS lookup Time should never be more than 12 ms and ideally should be 4 ms (see our forthcoming whitepaper on network performance in 2019-20).

Santander manages this. And there is no reason why NatWest Group shouldn’t. By tuning the DNS Lookup Time, they could shave off tens of milliseconds off overall latency and potentially knock HSBC off the top spot.

For these Open Data, that might not seem worth it putting too much more effort into optimizing already performant APIS. But with more mission critical ones – when every millisecond counts – you can’t afford to have DNS Lookup Time dragging down your quality for no good reason when your competitors are nailing it.

Get it sorted out! APImetrics can help.

Banking API Analysis: Overall Performance

Week Ending 1 March 2021

Category	Organization	CASC score
Cryptocurrency Exchanges	LATOKEN	9.30
Fintech	Stripe	9.36
Open Banking: PSD2	Railsbank	9.62
Open Banking UK: API Sandbox	Royal Bank of Scotland (Sandbox)	9.63
Open Banking UK: Production	Tide (Auth)	9.62
Open Banking UK: Open Data	Bank of Ireland	9.66

Bank of Ireland in the Open Banking – UK – Open Data category takes the overall title this week with a CASC score of 9.66. 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 for both this week and last week, that was the case in at least four of seven categories. That's impressive and these organizations should be proud. All six categories are headed by an API with CASC score of 9.30 or more, which is a very acceptable level of performance.

Banking API Analysis: Latency

eek Ending 1 March 2021

Category	Organization	Median Latency
Cryptocurrency Exchanges	Kraken	215 ms
Fintech	Stripe	323 ms
Open Banking: PSD2	Railsbank	103 ms
Open Banking UK: API Sandbox	Royal Bank of Scotland (Sandbox)	150 ms
Open Banking UK: Production	Creation Cards	152 ms
Open Banking UK: Open Data	HSBC	88 ms

HSBC in the Open Banking – UK – Open Data category takes the overall title again with a median latency of 88 ms, down from 94 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

eek Ending 1 March 2021

Category	Organization	CASC score
Cryptocurrency Exchanges	Coinlore	7.74
Fintech	Nobody under 8.00!
Open Banking: PSD2	DNB PSD2 (Sandbox)	7.35
Open Banking UK: API Sandbox	OBIE Directory (Sandbox Auth)	6.67
Open Banking UK: Production	Virgin Money	4.97
Open Banking UK: Open Data	HSBC	7.68

Virgin Money in the Open Banking API – UK – Production category takes the overall wooden spoon this week with a CASC score of 4.97. Next week we'll start discussing results for the first week of March. You can also check out our monthly report for February.  Weekly and monthly financial API analysis will also become available. In addition we'll  have special reports on the State of the APIs in the year 2020. All of this will be at your fingertips when you check back with us next week.

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